MINDSURFER / MARCONI’S VOODOO
The Zodiac

“Behold the Lord of all the Rings! Bow down before the gaze of the unblinking brown eye!” Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Marconi’s Voodoo, and that is bassist Snuffy’s arse. The proud display of his perfectly formed rear is the culmination of bizarre thrash-metal pantomime that makes up a typical Voodoo set. Snuffy (real name Steve) himself is James Hetfield in a dickie bow and dress shirt playing the Sheriff of Nottingham in the style of Vincent Price. A consummate showman, he intersperses the set with ludicrous degrees of hamming it up and Shakespearean props. Problem is, it’s such good entertainment that you could almost miss the music. What Marconi’s Voodoo play, when they actually get round to playing anything, is a splendidly tight funk thrash, all whiplash changes of pace and direction, Led Zep and Sabbath riffs given a sort of post-rock funk kicking; the improbable interface of Mogwai and Deep Purple isn’t something that’s really been explored fully yet. All good stuff then, but still it’s the between-song lunacy that stays with you, like the way a broken effects pedal can be turned into a grand melodrama. So where do they go from here? Our guess would be Behind You!

So now new Mindsurfer singer James Greene has got two difficult acts to follow. Because tonight for the first time he is stepping into the shoes vacated last year by Steve Phelps, ogreish beast of a singer and the man with the best primal roar in local music. But James is no greenback himself. Once the frontman with Underbelly, he knows a trick or two about menace and it doesn’t take long for him to settle into the role, coming on like a cross between Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman and Soulfly’s Max Cavalera with gruff conviction. Musically not too much has changed in Mindsurferland since their temporary lay-off. Those vast, grinding thrash riffs still carry all before them as they switch between old favourites and newer material. It’s all such a world away from Papa Roach and Linkin Park and, along with local compatriots Mook, they sound so much more like the future than any nu-metal bands.

Towards the end James is suddenly joined by Mr Phelps himself for ‘Pink Bits’ and a cover of Anti-Nowhere league’s ‘So What’ and it’s just like old times as pint glasses go flying and the gig ends up in a raucous, lager-sodden blaze of noise and glory. Mindsurfer are dead. Long live Mindsurfer!

Ian Chesterton