Burning Brides - London Highbury Garage - 7/4/03
4/5
By: Toby L
Showmanship that should be applauded, that's what it is. Hours before going onstage, and frontman Dimitri Coats of Philadelphia's essential rock trio Burning Brides is writhing with throat-pains. But, still, he's going onstage tonight, and not prepared to allow anyone to view his agony.
Though, in all fairness - that's not strictly true. For Coats is a bellower up there with the best of 'em - the Cobains, the Nicholls' - and a man that to scream is to sing, his deafening voiced expressions a possible reflection of a deep, psychiatric internal turmoil... Or, more likely - a compulsion to simply, merely, extravagantly rock.
The show nearly begins with a disappointing element of politeness, however - smiles to the audience, thank-you's for coming out tonight, blah, blah, blah - but we want abuse. The mind-readers they are, they hit us back with a plethora of it - a two-minute blast of 'Glass Slipper' that precedes otherwise a mental asylum's worth of sordid, messy riffs and demonic drums and bass that'll tear you a new arsehole... All topped off with an overriding Eastern eeriness to the lurking guitars and driven rhythms that allows such material as an infectious 'Arctic Circle' to soon spiral into an inferno of rigid angst, the likes of which set to demolish any pathetic rock-mortals in their presence once the mainstream gets a hold of this stuff.
With an encore comprising a minor stage-invasion and a stealthy nuclear-attack of a nutty 'If I'm A Man', it's clear that the 'Brides blazing fire is lit by an overpowering urge to devastate and overwhelm the senses, whilst never really steer too far clear into the category marked 'self-indulgent'. And, resultantly, morbid discord has never sounded so compulsively riveting.
Artists in this article: Burning Brides
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