The gig didn't exactly get off to a good start. We didn't get to the venue until half an hour after the doors were to have opened, but since the sound desk exploded some time before that, there was just crowds of goths hanging around outside. I said hello to some of them and then headed toward the Purple Turtle for some cider, where there were load more people that I knew, including the Cambridge lot who I was supposed to be meeting at the train station (Oops). A swift pint was had, and then we went into the venue (Which had opened the doors as soon as we ordered booze). I collided with Liz in the cloakroom queue and we drifted downstairs to the sounds of Excession.
The first few bands had nowhere near enough time on, being limited to only a few songs each in order to catch up on the time lost due to technical problems. From the early set's I enjoyed Psychophile's the most, but I do know them much better than the other early bands To quote one of my fellow concert goer's "Bloody hell, how can something that small and cute make a noise like that!". I will be sure to look up Excession again though.
I sat out Mechanical Cabaret, so I can't really comment on what they were like. After they left the stage, Killing Miranda took it. After a first song that was about kissing girls, or somesuch (EEEWWWWW! Girls!) they played Discotheque Necronimicon, and made the best of their shorter than expected set. For pretty much all their songs they had a lot of the audience singing along with them, and they do just click with the audience, something I have commented on before. I am looking forward to the next album coming out. He even got a room full of goths to give a cheer for the promoter (Frankie Flag). You've gotta be good to manage that one :)
After that lot of bouncing, ISC came on. For most of their set I was talking to Peta, Liz and Mark about Marks dubious giraffee fantasies. We also decided that we would probably have to leave a bit early from the Damned to get the last (11:15) train back to Cambridge. I did catch the last couple of ISC tracks, which seemed fairly good, but there was a lot of heckling from the audience as they kept singing just one more song. In the end the sound desk had to just cut them out. Somewhat harsh, but they were eating into valuable Damned time.
The Damned most definitely rocked! More stage presence than you could shake a pointy stick at, a singer with a brilliant outfit, and a truly mad bloke on the keyboards. What more could you possibly want? Music you say. Well, it was excellent too (Damned fine, if you will excuse the pun). I even knew some of what they played! If you can go to a damned gig, you should go, and if you can tell me about it then I'll probably go to it as well.
Alas, there was a certain amount of cutting things short at the end, as we (myself, Peta and Richard had to make tracks toward KX in order to get that train. Taxiage was aquired (Well, it was ran in front of.) which got us there with entire minutes to spare! The train home had some odd conversations involving Peta's legs and cake.
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