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