Kelly 8 @ Joseph's Well
By Danielle Millea
The bands are really packed in for this all-dayer organised by Bombed Out Records, Leeds' finest purveyor of melodic hardcore bands. It starts early, with Harbour, A Book Burning Diet, Tatako, The Magnificent and For Old Times Sake all on before tea time. I manage to catch a heap of bands in the middle of the line up, but unfortunately miss the ones I was really looking forward to in the form of The Dauntless Elite and The Leif Ericsson. Stupid trains on a Saturday!
To cheer me up are Fun! Yeah! who, as their name may suggest, are a laugh. They produce catchy power pop nuggets with sharp guitar riffs with vocals shouted over the top. The lads from Norwich have the randomness of Biffy Clyro, along with the minor chords overloaded with distortion.
Members of Dugong and Everybody Is Going To Die are together using the name of Calcutecs, another melodic band with a full sound, owing to the pounding drums, dual guitars and thumping bass. And of course Matt Broadbent's distinctive vocals.
Attack! Vipers! are the other band that go overboard with the addition of exclamation marks. Although they have only been together since early 2006, they are producing an ear splitting show that is tiring to watch. The sweat made here is unfortunately just from the Portsmouth-based band and not the crowd (a rare occurrence in the sauna called Joseph's Well).
This is the last show for The Minor Fall, the local band with a tendency for playing indie rock songs. The sight of singer Jenn not realising that her guitar needed drastically tuning did not make me vanish to the bar, as the band with members of D-Rail and Send More Paramedics far from made up for it with a great set of male to female vocals and a very bendy looking James on bass.
Their set also impressed The Mercury League, Sunderland's finest answer to post-hardcore, who dedicated their set to them. The shire energy of these guys is amazing; they are the sort of people that involve the crowd and actually look like they want to be nothing more than in a band. A mate in the pit brings it upon himself to cure the problem of a slipping bass drum with a large rock, probably from the wall outside. Other bands use carpet, but you never know, lugging a boulder around to steady the beat might catch on.
Now for the strongest female vocals I have ever seen in Leeds, from Kelly 8's singer Pia Högberg. Their album "The Technique Of Pushing Someone Forward", can not relate to their knack for forcing people backwards with the force they emit. I am truly stunned and in awe. This band from Sweden are apparently emo screamo, but I can see they are a lot more hardcore than that.
