Urge Overkill continued their Australian tour at the Gaelic Club in Sydney over the weekend. Regrettably the Gaelic Club is closing down. It is an intimate venue where punters can get up close and personal and heckle the bands during any lulls or technical breakdowns. Unfortunately for Urge Overkill, there were unintentional lulls and tuning issues which broke up their set several times, allowing some punters to offer Urge Overkill some clever and spiteful observations.
The heckles were, in part, justified. When Neil Evans saw Urge Overkill at The Espy for Tone Deaf, he wrote about how they just couldn’t gel and were “treading water”. Alas, things didn’t improve later on when they hit Sydney.
I was told at the door Urge Overkill will do their soundcheck at 9:50pm and hit the stage at 10pm. Have you ever heard of that? A band you may think of as slightly famous or reasonably professional, coming on stage, tuning their guitars then starting the gig? Maybe down the local pub but Urge Overkill?
Anyway the 10 minute prep for the gig didn’t help. They started unprepared and they/we suffered from it for the rest of the gig. Genuine frustration at their lack of preparation was their theme for the night. They often stopped, apologised, fixed up whatever was the problem and tried to carry on.
The Urge started the gig off with some of their new material from their latest release, Rock & Roll Submarine (2011), starting with songs like “Effigy” and “Poison Flower”. Maybe not the best strategy, as I doubt many people there would have even heard of the new album and they didn’t really know how to react. But to keep the punters from looking like a deer in headlights, the Urge alternated their new material with the singles off their Saturation (1993) album. You know the ones, “Positive Bleeding, Bottle of Fur” etc.
The Urge decided from the start that the show will be a three part gig. An exciting trilogy of awesomeness? No, just a gig with two good drinks breaks/encores and a change of clothes. Anyway, like most gigs, the two encores were the best part. Most of the technical issues were solved and they could get on with playing what they wanted, a best of, kind of, featuring an extended “Mason/Dixon” which was pretty damn good (as was “Sister Havana”) but “Girl You’ll be a Woman Soon” was complete shite, they can’t play it live, it’s just too damn hard for them in their current capacity as musicians. Maybe they will get better with practice, preparation and some roadies.
– Robert Pugsley
