Wolf & Cub

Wolf & Cub have begun touring the great land of Oz in support of their latest album “Science And Sorcery.” Supported by another fresh Australian band The Scare, this tour will be anything but smooth sailing.., well, for the audience anyway. It will be similar to a surprise atomic explosion from The Scare followed by being hit by a tight rhythm train with Wolf & Cub inside. The Republic bar in Hobart was filled backwards as per usual for a support band in Tasmania; picture a group of guys, sipping beers ten metres away from the band.

Although when The Scare hit stage it took the lead singer Kiss Reid about twelve seconds to jump over the stage foldbacks and start running about the venue screaming. Similar to if Iggy Pop and Craig Nicholls were to simultaneously impregnate a woman twenty or so years ago and it to magically create one wild son. The audience became instantly intimidated and intrigued at the same time of the sight of this strange man getting up in their faces and dishing abuse to them. It seemed they could not bring themselves to move any closer to the stage out of this strange fright. About five or so songs in, Reid proclaims to his shaken audience, “...enough of this foreplay shit, let’s make love.” Nobody moved. Although magically around ten minutes later at the end of the set, The Scare had won the audience over and provided the necessary warm up for Wolf & Cub.

Wolf & Cub packed The Republics’ small stage with towers of effect pedals, amps and drum hardware to show off their tightly blended set of new and old tunes. Ranging from the early EP, “Vessels” and the new “Science And Sorcery” album, they opened with a rockin’ version of “The Loosest of Gooses” from their new full length. Straight away it was obvious that the new tracks from Science And Sorcery were stronger live compared to their studio recordings; the power of two drummers was very noticeable in comparison. Wolf & Cub are now using their two drummer power to create some effectively interesting percussive drive to their new tunes which helped the “looser” more psychedelic songs stand out in particular. The room was filled with a constant wall of sound for the better half of the set list, including improvisational jams and double drummer drum solos within the first three songs.

The sound wall included songs such as Rozalia Bizarre, What Are They Running, One To The Other, the new single Seven Sevens, and This Mess to create a sweetly diverse combination for our now numb ears. When the sound wall finally broke the crowd showed an amazing amount of respect which was given right back to the people with the second half of the set. A nice break from the pounding bass drum quarter notes was Restless Sons featuring a mellow loop of samples and eerie guitar notes.

The second half of the set favoured older tracks such as Vessels, (being hella fast) Kingdom and Steal Their Gold from their 2006 album Vessels, and an oldie Thousand Cuts from their self titled EP. Wolf & cub have created a tight show from their musical catalogue and their set today is worth checking out. Get along to a show of this tour, you need to see these two bands play back to back, so get out your credit card and click on a link below and get yourself a ticket.

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