Date: August 27, 2020
Venue: Tempo Bar, Brisbane
Acts: No Anchor, Fangs of a TV Evangelist
It’s my first encounter with Melbourne’s Fangs of a TV Evangelist. From the get-go, I like their ferocious racket — all spitting, crackling guitar and crunching percussion. I like the way all-out-effort is writ large across the shirtless bodies of drummer Jem and guitarist Jace — muscles strained and corded as they work to wring extra decibels from their instruments.
Like turns to unadulterated awe during a song I later discover is called We Shall Rule. It’s not just the doom-laden bass riff and the way that final drawling note hangs portentously before swinging around for another go. It’s not just the extra kick from Jem’s high-hat striking exactly when Mike hits those rumbling bass notes. And it’s not just the disjointed counterpoint of Jace’s guitar.
It’s the hypnotic build-up. The repetition that’s a slow evolution and intensification: the disjointed guitar morphing into a constant fuzz, the cymbal-heavy percussion deepening into rapid fills of snare and toms, the bass driving the tempo ever-faster.
Jace is singing. Then he’s screaming himself hoarse and the drums that so ominously dropped out are back louder than ever and it’s like an apocalypse, no, a post-apocalypse of sound as the vocals devolve into wordless howling collapse and the guitar disintegrates into squelching feedback.
It’s all these things. It’s massive and majestic like watching a nuke go off in slow motion.
Frankly, I feel totally ashamed for Brisbane that there were no more than 50 or 60 punters present to see No Anchor the other night. Shame, Brisbane, shame! I mean, if you like your sound brutal and unrelenting — and attendances for Slayer and Megadeth the other week indicates there’s a few thousand around who fit that bill – you should have a shrine to Ian Rogers and Alex Gillies. So, yes, it’s “just” a bass and a drumkit. No, there’s no guitar solos to have wet dreams about. But I guarantee that Steam, a crushing 13-minute opus that’s as thick as 30-week-old engine oil is just as suitable for enthusiastic, mindlessly aggressive headbanging as Angel of Death ever was.
And it’s not like the gig was exorbitantly priced — cover was a grand total of $8. A whole 10 cents more than a chicken kebab!
But no, every walking, talking, breathing turd in Brisbane would rather piss their money up against the wall at the fucking Big Douche Out. Cunts the lot of them.