Here at Gigslutz we’ve already established Elevant’s line-up curating skills are a thing of wonderment. For the launch of their third LP, There Is A Tide, tonight’s gig at Liverpool’s Buyers Club is no different, as they welcome the Northwest’s finest noisemakers and trailblazers along to again bludgeon and lash us around like flimsy ragdolls.

Serenading onlookers into a false sense of security before spasmodically falling into their winning brand of off kilter lo-fi alt rock, SPQR reel in the evening’s first arrivals like misguided moths to a wildfire. With bassist ‘Slick Nick’ holding down the fuzz-smothered melody and Bex’s relentless driving kit work, frontman Pete has the freedom to flail, deliver good willed fuck you’s to the audience and gurn away in ecstasy like a cracked office worker on the tail end of a meltdown. They close with their first official single, the immense and perverse, QOTSA-like ‘Talking To The Dead’.

Appearing to haemorrhage cool, post punk five-piece Go Fiasco take the stage. Every opening frontman Daniel Duggan’s grave baritone leaves free is instinctively seized by Jamie Robert’s inspired lead guitar, as each artful dive to his pedal board results in a helical delayed refrain or unpredictable outburst. Some of the magnetism of the other acts on the bill seems to be missing, until the double-time swagger of their closing number, where the tenacious grit of Duggan’s vocals really breaks through.

‘Gagged And Bound.’ ‘Little Jesus Bastard…’ ‘Cat Stabber.’ With song titles like that you can make a pretty solid guess the next act isn’t going to be a delicate trad folk two-piece. With a disco ball hanging motionless overhead – as if strung up as a sacrificial offering – the rallying death knell of Hyena Kill begins. Every blow drummer Lorna reigns down on the kit falls with the brutality of an executioner at the block, which locks in with the fearsome, pure power of vocalist/guitarist Steven Dobb’s scream. It’s a relentless, vehement attack on the senses, with the duo appearing to carry out their own personal vendettas on dead air. Someone suggests making it louder. Somehow the request is met. This is sonic brutality at its finest.

And so the stage is set for Elevant. It’s now about 110 degrees onstage. Wide-eyed and feverish Michael examines his audience as if working out the ideal way to get into each persons head and cannibalistically hack them apart from the inside. With something to prove the trio throw themselves into opener Nothing and after an unfortunate technical mishap, like carnage incarnate and with a screwdriver acting as his barbed scalpel, Mike excises his Gibson for the intro of ‘Open Heart Surgery’. Like performing a backseat operation during a breakneck getaway, the savage pace is only matched and exceeded by ‘Is This It’ running straight into the menacing glory of ‘Audience’.

Tuning pegs are toyed with to create the seasick groove of slow burner ‘Dead Skin’, which swan dives into a tendon stripping schizophrenic outro. In a troubling whisper Mike utters, “Can you feel my heart beat? Can you feel my breath on your dead skin?” in a manner comparable to Nick Cave during ‘Higgs Bolson Blues’.

‘Again’ proves to be a totally different beast live, with Hannah and Tom keeping the whole song on the very verge of falling in on itself. It’s a masochistic masterclass; especially when Tom’s outro fill intensifies and runs on to the point where the tension is unbearable and stunned glances are exchanged throughout the room, as he punishes both band and audience in the process.

To call it a “tight” performance undervalues the trio’s effort this evening. With their prog-like precision and constant genre hopping (which isn’t a case of awkwardly trying their hand at different genres until one clumsily fits; Every stylistic u-turn is fiendishly innovative and inescapably engaging) it’s no wonder the experimental DIY approach they apply to every aspect of their work, works so god damn well.

“Do you actually want an encore? I just want to sleep” claims Michael before they slip into the mellow balladry of ‘Last Man Standing’, which once more for good measure dynamically collides into a wall of pure overdriven bliss for ‘We Eat Our Young’. We take our leave (falling victim to the stupidly early last train calling us home) as the refrain to ‘Last Man Standing’ is picked up and carried by the audience. It’s a fitting exit and it’s truly a gig we won’t soon be forgetting.

Words: David Weir

Featured Image: Mark Hughes