Roxoff Festival The Night Before – King Kraken, A’priori, Liberty Slaves, Coldharbour, Pilot The Dune

The B2, Norwich, Saturday, May 3

Starting the evening with a (failed) seance to contact Jeff from Slayer courtesy of King Kraken. Ending it with a completely unplanned (but utterly awesome) detour to see a Guns N’ Roses tribute band. And filling it with some of the realest, kick assest rock n roll in the middle… Roxoff Festival The Night Before pretty much tore the roof off the B2 in Norwich and was an unforgettable night of friends, fun, and the finest heavy music...

Pilot The Dune

No shirt. All the swagger. Full frontman mode deployed. Pilot the Dune’s lead singer may not be bouncing from side to side of the stage making the crowd crick their necks to keep up, but many vertebrae are still at risk of injury tonight with the heavy head nodding this band’s stoner groove incites. With scuzzy, rough vocals over driving drums, these local boys sling the raw rock n roll of tracks including ‘Modern Slaves’ and ‘El Machina’ around the B2 with style and spirt.

Coldharbour

Coldharbour are pure, spectacular, low-end, skull penetrating stuff. Furious riffage and a solid backbone of beats and bass underpin vocalist Tom Brown’s sweetly savage vox. Tonight Coldharbour play their indie/grunge songs, soak them in petrol, strike a match and burn the whole damn lot with thunderous drums (‘Fall Away’), paint stripping hard rock promise (‘Last Stand’), and stoke the flames further with a set full of high octane heft.

Liberty Slaves

With music that makes you wanna hit the highway and keep on truckin’ all night, Huddersfield’s finest hell raisers Liberty Slaves serve more power and energy than the National Grid. Tearing through a set stuffed full of dirty rock n roll bangers including ‘Queen Obscene’ and ‘Never Enough’, sandpaper voiced lead singer Ryan Meehan’s Guns n Roses tee is pretty apt. Yer boy could duel with Axl tonight. And win.

A'priori

A set of A’priori’s finest come to bed/come to the party/come to rock yourself silly songs sees the pit packed. Putting meat on the sexy little bones of the lyrics sung in Tony Lang’s vox with a sting are drums firing off rounds of beats as loud and sharp as bullets. ‘Turn It Up’ and ‘Fear’ land loud and proud, the band’s tambourine does the rounds in the crowd, and Mark Wilson continues to be possibly the only man alive to make playing keyboards look cool. You’d sell your soul for A’priori’s songs. On record they’re mesmerising, dirty little classic rockers with a twist. Hear them live and you just lose your mind. ‘Voodoo Love’ is especially guilty of getting this gloriously unhinged reaction from the crowd tonight. The boys drop the fan fave mid-set, so the audience can only imagine what treats A’priori still have instore. Hard rocking high rolling ‘Making Love To The Devil’ should close the set but audience insatiability reigns supreme and demands for ‘One more song!’ are met with an insanely amazing, rule book ripping up version of Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name Of’. What. A. Set.

King Kraken

The colossus that is King Kraken sledgehammer the stage with opening heavyweight ‘Scream’ that shakes bones all the way to the back of tonight’s venue and beyond. With power and volume that could slay the kraken itself should it dare to show its squid face, this Welsh five piece play metal fine enough to make anyone bow down before them – man or beast. And tonight the B2 is theirs. With a set ranging from real rock glory to bruising battle cries, King Kraken shred, scream, pound and roar their way through ‘El Giganto’, ‘Haddonfield ‘78’ ‘Green Terror’ and the beautifully touching rock radio regular ‘Hero’. ‘How’s all my Vikings?’ asks operatic growler in chief Mark Donoghue before launching into ‘Berserker’. Slower, lower ‘Preacher’ can’t be contained for long, breaking into a speedball of sonic savagery. Rich Mears’ drumming pulsates through King Kraken’s performance which is part show, part battle preparation. Tales of terrifying mythical monsters have never taken such a tuneful turn as they do under Mark’s watch. The boys’ set is a battering ram of riffage, blended with groove, slick licks and a bloody good time. King Kraken like to serve it heavy, but they bring it with heart. And tonight they get the mix spot on.

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