London Upstairs At the Garage 30th August 2002

The Full Line Up:-

The Ghost Of Lemora : Corrosion : Tarantella Serpentine : Excession : Ju Ju Babies
Promoted by Flag Promotions

By far our best gig, we had great fun and it went down fantastic!

Set List:- Intro : Temple Of Secrets : Souless City : Armageddin In a Can : Cold Blooded Martyr
Speak And Distroy : Shattered Fragments : Resurrection Playground


~review by Uncle Nemesis


It's time for a complete change of style now, as Corrosion arrive on stage. This is the band which grew out of guitarist Matt North's perennial 90s-scene contenders All Living Fear, and anyone familiar with ALF's guitar 'n' drum machine mash-up will hear similarities in Corrosion's sound. But there are differences, too, and those differences are more significant than the similarities. Corrosion are a *rock* band first and foremost - the gothic choir-samples which cropped up in All Living Fear stuff are conspicuous by their absence here. The guitar (and, at times, guitars, for vocalist Paul spanks a mean plank himself in a couple of songs) is well to the fore: a big, bad, crunchy, physical sound. Sometimes the guitars overwhelm the rhythm section, which is all on the backing track - and this perhaps points up a potential problem. These days, when all the rocky bands of the goth scene seem to be cutting the crap and going for the full-band line-up, Corrosion's reliance on a backing track for a large chunk of their sound does take away some of the force of the music. The Faces Of Sarah, Belisha, even Passion Play now - all these bands have the full 'rock band' line-up: bass, drums, the works. These bands are Corrosion's peer group, their contemporaries - even, dare I say it, the competition. If Corrosion want to make serious waves in the current scene, it's these bands they've got to match, and I wonder how they'll fare when so much of their live show is on Minidisc. Still, for all that, the set hammers along quite impressively. Paul's vocals are intense and - if we really must have a comparison - a touch Cult-like, but, thankfully, without any of Ian Astbury's tiresome 'Look, mum, I'm a rock star!' stuff. The songs themselves are, by and large, full-on rockers - 'Resurrection Playground' in particular comes roaring out of the traps - but there's also an interlude of distilled Essence Of Punk in the form of 'Shattered Fragments'. This song is a 60-second explosion, a musical hand grenade lobbed into the set. It's all good solid stuff, and more rocky than Kilimanjaro.


Taken From www.starvox.net

Photos taken by Michael Johnson