Frenzal Rhomb

The previous day being Friday the 13th, everyone who survived to make it to Adelaide Uni Bar for Frenzal Rhomb’s sold-out set on Saturday were that much more pumped up for having survived to be there. Not that seeing Frenzal Rhomb in a gig setting as close to their natural environment as possible isn’t a damn good reason to be pumped up in and of itself, but hey – any excuse will do.

The first band on the block were a group of little-known local Adelaide lads who went by the name of Stuff Box. A young-looking band of five, they played a fairly straight punk set with some rock and ska elements thrown in for good measure. Their enthusiasm was good, and their music nicely matched the Uni Bar’s dim, dark and dingy settings. To judge their musical quality by the crowd, there were plenty of nodding heads and quite a bit of applause at the end of their bigger songs. A decent enough set by any measure of a support for Frenzal Rhomb.

The second bunch of slots, however, was entirely a different situation. While called Sex Wizard, the moniker didn’t prepare me for the music. Playing a loud, heavy set of... I guess I’d say slow metalcore?... the band caught both myself and the rest of the audience completely by surprise. Notwithstanding the fact that metalcore and punk really are quite distinct genres, and the majority of the punk-and-rock crowd at the Bar for Frenzal were never really going to get into them… the music was fair crap. Both the singer’s screams and too-hardcore-for-you attitude on stage were off-key, and while the rest of the band handled thankfully handled their instruments better, the songs just had nothing going for them. I’m not sure how they landed the main support for a band like Frenzal, but there you are – it’s a strange world.

Luckily, Frenzal themselves were in fine form. It hadn’t been too long since the band had been in Adelaide (the last time being in December with the No Sleep Til festival), but as the sold-out-ness of the gig demonstrates, Frenzal are always a band welcome here. Big cheers went up as Jay, Tom, Gordy and the Doctor took the stage. On a personal note, it was gratifying to see that Jay’s hair is pretty well floor length by now – as I’m pretty sure Shakespeare once said, “Dreads maketh the man.”

The sounds were all pretty good from the band, and the atmosphere was, as expected, great. The band played a good mix of old and new material as well as the typical crowd favourites, and kept the crowd surging the whole time, with a moshpit roughly one third the size of the entire crowd: choice. While big responses in particular went up for “Dugadugabowbow”, and “Punch in the Face”, my personal favourites were “You Can’t Move Into My House” for the massive amount of audience lyrical participation (mainly on the “fuck you!”, but hey, it works), and a version of “Methadone” with bassist Tom taking over the singing duties with a surprisingly great voice. The band left to the seminal “Never Had So Much Fun” and a hearty round of applause. Good stuff all round for the lads. And while I run the risk of jinxing them here, don’t worry too much if you missed them – they’ll surely (touch wood) be back. No-one escapes the Uni Bar for long.

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