Wednesday 27th May 2009 @ Mother’s Ruin, Bristol

Tonight the Mother’s Ruin plays host to a Bristol band slinking onto the trip-hop scene, they are known as The Evil Beat. Having never heard of this band before, I decided to briefly check out their myspace during the day to see what kind of music I was in for. I was surprised when I ended up listening to the four tracks on there for most of the afternoon on a loop!

At the gig, the band were instantly recognisable as the musicians were all dressed as skeletons with matching skull face paint. Vocalist Natalie was dressed in an elegant goth-styled black dress and corset. This kind of stage attire instantly set them apart from most local bands I have seen as they have clearly put a lot of effort in to their look and it makes them very memorable as performers.

Minutes into the set and the atmosphere had turned to a chilled out, bullet time reality. Their dark bass sounds, haunting riffs and freaky costumes had completely captured my attention. Natalie’s sweet yet poignant vocals complimented their pounding beats and chilling songs very well. You could tell that with more gigs under her belt and more trips to the studio, her vocals will strengthen to a beautiful quality.

In terms of sound, if you can imagine melting together CDs from Angie Hart, Lamb, Portishead and The Devics then this would be what I would hope to find. Their set had all the tracks from the myspace including the sublime Hospital and, my personal favourite, Requiem. This song had jumped out at me as it escalated to a heavy guitar riff that would not be out of place in a vampire movie or action trailer. My only personal gripe was that there were two covers thrown in which, to me, is an unsigned band no no! It can sometimes make you remember the band for the song they didn’t write rather than the songs they did. Even though they made the covers their own, with a sound this distinctive, it just didn’t seem necessary.

It was a shame that this gig was on the same night as the football as there was a fairly poor turn out but from what I gather I had the better deal! Go see The Evil Beat.

www.myspace.com/theevilbeatband

Stu Freeman