Immune @ Brudenell Social Club
By Chris Woolford
After a short summer hiatus the Engine Room's cogs and pistons pumping again. As it splutters into action it's headliners Immune who emerge from the stifling smoke (machine) and jerk into industrial action.
Immune make the sound of a thousand Ork-like steel workers hammering metal sheets transforming them into thunderous war machines. In the blazing heat of the melts one of their number looses concentration and brings his hammer down upon his hand, letting out an ear blistering wail of unimaginable pain. But the workers keeping on going relentlessly. "Must build. Must build".
And Immune build the most stunning wall of screwed-up fucked-up sound. Adorned on stage with a hundred different electronic boxes and gadgets the guitars strapped to their backs seem almost irrelevant. We must build. We must build. And the chants of the workers keep them working: "Monkey, Monkey, Monkey. MONKEY! MONKEY! MONKEY!" This is the sound of Immune.
But it's a much more relaxed start to the night. As the laid back Wild Beasts are anything but wild beasts.
Each one of the many stunning guitars on stage is worth more than all the cars in Hyde Park. A 12-string Burns for god's sake. And somehow they look like they've lost their way from an episode of Scooby Doo and stumbled in here. And we're all the better for it because their brand of head-tapped camped-up lounge music, while difficult to digest, is unlike anything you'll ever see again.
It's Mike Flowers Pops with a schizophrenic transsexual Kate Bush on vocals. It's Burt Bacharach played backwards on a bent vinyl at double speed. It's just plain yet inexplicably odd.
The wondrous drummer ignores his kit and claps his hand. The guitarists wobble about and "Oom-pah" down the microphones while the singer, oh the singer, he's three different people in the body of one single man. His high pitch, almost female, vocal style blends into a low, rough growl before freaking out into a shouty bluesy rant. Madness.
Then things get even madder as The Butterfly have accosted the floor with a plethora of floor toms. The stage rumbles into action as a mad guitarist flings himself across the room and riffs himself into oblivion.
Looking like Dexy's Midnight Runners on a trip to Florida Beach The Butterfly are young apprentices to operatic metal. Taking cues from the likes of Faith No More and System of a Down they are brimming with ideas. Choral melodies and melodic high pitch wails are broken up by high speed power-chords which are then swapped for huge rolling drums and thumping thwacks of bass.
The singer crashes to the floor. Is he dead? No, we can hear him breathing. What's that? "More power, more power" he begins to chant. The chants flood round the room until the whole of the Brudenell is chanting "more power, more power!". And the Butterfly rip into action once more.
Yet tonight is not The Butterfly's night. As the smoke engulfs them until we can't see them anymore, it's Immune that emerge as the masters of musical mastery wielding so much more power, more power.
