The Sheffield Scenester

It was Saturday night and down at The Leadmill nine bands, yes you did read that correctly NINE bands were putting on a mini festival for charity. The charities in question were The Sheffield Children’s Hospital and Headway (a charity that works to improve life after brain injury) and for a £2 entry fee how could anyone complain at that. Another plus for me was the fact that I’d only seen four of the bands before, and so with a plethora of fresh meat to gorge myself on, it certainly was an event to look forward to!

However the last thing I expected from the opening band, Volume Zero, was for my ear drums to be practically destroyed by the sheer power behind the guitar and drums while a petite figure of a girl sang along with equal power, but total control in her voice. Guitarist Gavin Mellor was more than content to straddle the front monitors as he squeezed every chord he could muster out of his axe, while on drums Paul Vardy seemed intent on destroying his kit. At the front however vocalist Kirsty Taylor was a revelation, rising above all this mayhem with perfect pitch, despite all that you still felt she had plenty to give. This was only their second gig in this present line up, but already they looked tighter than the proverbial duck’s *rse and obviously relished the experience.

Hard pounding rock designed to hook you is their manifesto and they deliver it right from the thumping opener ‘Tick Tick Tick’ to the slightly darker closing number ‘Let The Right One In’. They may be called Volume Zero, but in the words of Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel “These go to eleven!”

Next was a quick trot into the second room to catch Fatty Brown And The Food Division, a band with a name so mad that you just have to see them out of curiosity. Half expecting a novelty act of sorts I was rather surprised to hear a collection of Britpop style anthems with influences ranging as far back as The Kinks right up to Oasis, apparently front man Neil Brown is quite a fan of this genre. Easily their strongest track was the semi-acoustic song ‘Stay And Fight’ as it opened with a simple keyboard and vocal combination before a delicate guitar joined along with the rest of the band.

With only twenty minutes per band timings were tight, so it was a question of racing between stages to catch every song. The next ones up were Famous Villains, an act we last saw at our Halloween bash down at SOYO. Full of energy, full of bounce, they tore through their set almost as if they were trying to cram the usual seven/eight songs into their limited timeslot. It didn’t really help that lead singer Anthony Lindley’s guitar strap kept coming loose from his instrument during every song, in fact it wasn’t until the last song that it finally stayed in place. But with a couple of their catchiest tunes to tap along too, namely ‘Spies’ and ‘Ready to Die’, most folks around me just enjoyed their show, regardless of what was happening to his guitar.

Arriving back in the second room we were greeted by a rather shabby yet smartly dressed bunch of youths named Low Culture who introduced themselves with the line;

“Thanks for watching us stand around, this ones called ‘Chic And The Motherf*ck*rs’!”

Diving straight in with a collection of the most super addictive rock ‘n’ roll punk riffs known to man this was, for me, and in no way do I mean to disrespect any of the other bands, the best song of the night. The crowd loved it as they all stood there beaming away at the machine gun delivery on vocals by Peaches Jones, even the bar staff stopped work to dance along, well frankly nobody was bothered about buying a drink as all eyes were focused on the stage. With more super hyped songs in their arsenal the set just flew by, pity really since the whole room looked happy to stop all night, I’m just hoping they head this way again as they’d come all the way out from Immingham near Grimsby!

Back in the main room it was time for Steel Trees to unleash their festering gunk filled rock on the unsuspecting crowd! Me, I’ve always loved these guys and if you’ve never seen them and love your rock fully cranked up to cranium smashing overload, then you will too! Like Motorhead – with whom they share several traits – they are a truly dominating force to be reckoned with, the songs are are not so much delivered, instead they’re spewed out and with titles like ‘Death Bed Head Smash’, ‘Sick’ and ‘Meat And Cherry Pie’, this one incidentally went out to “all the lovely ladies”, you know you’re in for a rough ride. Never mind, it really, really does work and they are a great act to see, I’m sure they’ll be the first to admit they’re not selling a pretty boy rock band image, so forget the packaging, just stand back and feel the pain.

Returning to the second room, slightly shell shocked...but feeling very thankful for the experience we were confronted by Blessa and the second female vocalist of the night. In complete contrast to the previous act, Blessa opened with a haunting riff, almost Banshees in style with the style of guitar playing used. On vocals, the lead singer (I failed to get her name – soz!) whether intentionally or not produced a delicate wailing warble to her voice that befits the ghostly echoes of the musicians around her. Oddly enough though towards the end of the set their songs became slightly more mainstream in style which somehow didn’t work quite as well for me, luckily the newest track they played, ‘Hellas’ was of the slightly intense and kooky variety that gives them that slight edge over a lot of female led bands.

A Season Of Secrets were just getting started when I walked into the main room, frankly I lost count of how many people were on stage, but they opened with quite an impressive combination of music, energy and bounce. With a good barrage of sound and slightly co-ordinated thrashing about, the whole thing was quite a spectacle to behold, a very promising start to say the least. Once they got on with the serious task of following through with a good tune or two then the cracks began to appear, the music was still quite a potent force, but lyrically and vocally, what began as a roar soon turned into a bit of a whimper, one person behind me even commented “Looks like they’ve shot their load already!” They certainly have the firepower to bang out a good tune, it was just a shame the vocals fell short!

For the final time everyone headed back towards the second stage in time for The Monday Club, a band that have garnered high praise around town, and rightly so as they not only know how to punch out a solid rockin’ tune, but they put on one seriously tight show everytime they play! Opening with their very own Britpop styled anthem ‘Life And Soul’, there really is a lot of Gallagher and Kasabian going on in this track. One of the many attributes to this band is that they utilize two vocalists in the shape of Paul Hawksworth and Darren Ullyet, now Paul is obviously the more Gallagher-esque vocalist of the two while Darren has a voice suited much more to classic rock. Poles apart really but they do compliment each other brilliantly as their back catalogue contains songs covering both genre’s and more. With a set that contained some of their older material, it was good to hear some new tunes from these guys and I look forward to seeing them in the coming year.

The final band of the night were The Velotones, another blindingly good grinder of a band, not as angry as Steel Trees, what they seem to sell is all out menace and they certainly do it with style. Every song has a pounding heart at its core in the shape of drummer Kris Senior, whose frantic tub thumping drives the bass and guitar relentlessly, Matthew Hall on guitar grinds out chord upon chord as if he’s choking it to death while Jamie Duckworth on bass holds everything together. Their newest song, ‘This Is The Life’ (hope I got that right), held back on the grind in favour of a more user friendly melody, but try as they could, you still felt an underlying current of menace bubbling underneath ready to explode. The night finished with their classic song ‘This Is Rock And Roll’ and by now a few moshers had joined the front audience which rounded the evening off perfectly.

I’ll happily hold my hand up and say I loved it tonight, and with nine quality bands on the bill it really was worth much more than the £2 entry fee, but at the end of the day the amount of money raised for the charities was £1000 so hopefully this event will be repeated in the future.

Words by Geoff Buckthorpe
Photos by Dean Stead