GOTHAM 4,
18/05/2003
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Mechanical Caberet - Well, three's company and all that! |
Gotham 4 suffered from several minor technical problems during the course of the evening, but despite these, it was very enjoyable as a whole. I arrived too late to catch the first two bands on the bill, but was in time for the beginning of Psychophile's set. This is a band I've never heard before, but I was immediately impressed by their overdriven guitar-work and energetic vocals. |
Their on-stage presence is noticably smaller than the other bands that evening; their programmer no longer appears in the live performances apparently. They had one guitarist/backing vocalist, and a front-woman whose output switches between operatic and more conventional metal-ish styles. Oh, and a model cat with flashing green LED eyes. This is a band I hope to see more of in future.
Next up was Ghost of Lemora, a much larger band, and another which I had not heard in the past. I tried hard to like them, but after a while I couldn't help feeling that I've heard it all before. They play very competently, but it's a fairly camp blend of guitar/synthesiser goth pop that so many other bands seem to be doing at the moment and I felt they were perhaps capable of better if they came up with more original material.
Attrition were unable to attend, and were replaced at short notice by Mechanical Cabaret. They did their best, but further problems meant they were only able to play a set of three songs. This is sad, as I do quite like Cabaret, but I just couldn't see the point in having them on stage for such a short time. Hopefully they have made their existence known to a few more fans now anyway.
Killing Miranda brought a much more aggressive, metal sound to the evening and the crowd responded very well to them - evidently they had a lot of fans present, as so many people knew the words of their songs. I have not seen much of this band before, but I liked them. They have a much more guitarry/dreadlock-flinging feel to them, but without seeming like anything too cliched or nu metal.
In Strict Confidence had a bit of rough time by comparison - their set was cut embarassingly short by further scheduling problems, and they didn't get a universally warm reception from the audience. Which is a shame as they played very well, and there were still a large proportion of the crowd (myself included) who enjoyed their more dancy industrial sound.
Finally, the whole of the Camden Palace was finally quiet when The Damned came on stage. Due to some scheduling problems of my own (transport-wise) I was not able to see all of their performance, but I was hugely impressed by the first few songs. Despite having been around for some length of time, they didn't have any difficulty in spanning the age gap of all the fans assembled and the atmosphere was electric. Almost to mirror this, vocalist Dave Vanian wore a cape and top hat, while in contrast Captain Sensible (bass) wore a red T shirt and scrolling LED message board on his chest. Needless to say, many old hits made an appearence, but so too did material from their recent album which was also well received. I'm just kicking myself for not taking the following day off work, it would have been well worth it!
Review by Howard Gardner.
