It was a beautiful day along the St. Kilda promenade however inside The Espy on Saturday it was an entirely different story. Running for its third year in a row the Rock The Bay Festival saw the iconic venue open its doors to 31 bands blaring out some of Australia’s newest and wildest rock and roll tunes.
The event spread out over three stages in the basement, the front bar and the Gershwin Room; with early sets being designated into patron friendly half hour timeslots. Some bands took advantage of the short timeframes to showcase their best works while other seemed to struggle with the restriction. By the late afternoon spirits were high and jugs of beer were the drink of choice.
The Tim McMillan Band stole all eyes in the front room as Tim dazzled the audience with his lightning fingers playing the style which the band have titled ‘Diet Goblincore’. His act could be summed up in an amalgamation of dry wit and raw skill. While his joking was well received by the audience it was his truly unique take on ‘stunt’ guitar playing which had jaws dropping all around the room.
Shortly after, Adelaide four piece, The Beards took to the stage. The four bearded men, singing songs about beards made no apologies for the obvious theme here (and facial hair never sounded so good). Fun and gritty, folk rock songs like ‘If Your Dad Doesn’t Have a Beard, You’ve Got Two Mums’ were huge hits in the front bar and appeared to be crowd favorites.
A short brawl out the front stole the attention of the majority of punters in the main room just before Redcoats appeared on stage. With a sound big enough to fill a stadium there was no challenge for spectacle here. Soon enough the crowd had returned to the stage and with effortless precision the boys exploded with a set of hard rocking tunes. With deep desert infused guitar riffs, wailing vocals, and an ever-rolling rhythm section, Redcoats proved themselves to be one of the more exciting acts emerging on the circuit.
In the Gershwin Room the metal bands were in control and we managed to climb our way across the venue to catch the end of the melancholy metal rockers Sydonia who had a well established mosh pit by the end of their set. Enigmatic front man Dana Roskvist sang with a heavy heart and his band played a commendably tight set heavy on riffs and thunderous drumming. Bellusira stood out as true perfectionists. Lead singer Crystal Blackman exuded both energy and passion as the audiovisual team did their best to keep up with the lights and on-screen sequences that accompanied the music.
Entering back into the front room to catch headliners Barbarion, we were surprised to find fake fire lanterns surrounding the stage. The band had put some effort into dressing up the stage and for a group unfamiliar to us, we weren’t sure whether their music would hold up to the gimmick. The crowd reaction as the seven-piece band marched on stage dressed as Celtic warriors, Roman soldiers and Medieval mystics was a mixture between laughter and terror.
Sure enough there was no disappointment in the performance here. Barbarion flew through a set of 80’s punk driven Viking metal tunes that had everybody spinning in confusion. The opening track ‘Barbarion’ acted perfectly as a self-referencing title track and everything after that was a guitar-induced face-melting blur. Between songs, axe wielding front man Frankie Gionfriddo indulged us with some dark aged-humour by asking the crowd, “Why are there so many of you without beer in your hand?… it is time to feast”.
The final acts of the night were Don Fernando in the basement, Alba Varden in the front room and New Skinn in the Gershwin room. While numbers began to dwindle at this point, die-hard fans and hard rockers stayed until the very end, relishing in what had been a great day of ear exploding tunes, reverberating through the beer soaked floorboards of one of Melbourne’s great live venues.
– Ben Wright-Smith
