Opening with a single you only just dropped mere weeks before is a ballsy move, but when you’ve sold out your current tour in a matter of minutes, and there’s a few hundred sweaty, baseball-capped punters who react in fits when you take the stage, it’s not exactly risky.
In fact, safety seems to be the theme du jour. While the mosh certainly seems to be rowdy, those who fall are immediately picked back up, lost items are tossed to the front to be retrieved later, and should a disoriented mosher bump into a fellow punter, they immediately issue a contrite “Sorry, mate.”
With Sydney outfit Palms having ripened the evening’s sold-out crowd, Queensland’s favourite sons, Violent Soho, unleashed their first salvo, a brilliant trifecta of grunge-informed alternative rock with a characteristically Australian drawl.
Kickstarting the evening’s entertainment with new single ‘Like Soda’ and a quick, friendly “Hello, Melbourne”, the Mansfield boys launched into fiery renditions of ‘Neighbour Neighbour’, ‘Lowbrow’, ‘How to Taste’, and ‘In the Aisle’.
“Everyone had enough to drink tonight?” asked a jovial James Tidswell, before frontman Luke Boerdam sounded the opening chimes of ‘Saramona Said’, one of the singles taken from the band’s breakthrough 2013 album, Hungry Ghost.
After similarly sterling, raucous performances of ‘Fur Eyes’ and ‘Evergreen’, the band submitted the crowd with a one-two combination of ‘Covered in Chrome’ and ‘Dope Calypso’, two Hungry Ghost fan favourites, which turned the Corner Hotel into a reverberating sweat box.
The audience was finally given a moment to catch their breath after the final ring of piercing feedback still left over from ‘Dope Calypso’. The band departed from the stage for a few minutes and friends and strangers turned to each other wide-eyed, shaking their heads as if to say, “Man…”
The band returned to a raucous reception from the crowd. Two punters even high-fived out of excitement, and no doubt, sheer anticipation of the forthcoming onslaught.
The onslaught came in the form of two barn-burning renditions of ‘Jesus Stole My Girlfriend’ and ‘Tinderbox’. As the mosh found its final wings, crowd surfers caught waves across the mass of sweaty bodies.
Boerdam and Tidswell duelled as Michael Richards violently pounded away at the drums and Luke Henery proved himself to be one of the Australian alt-rock scene’s bass giants.
The set concluded with a simple “Thank-you” from the band and much hollering and applause from the crowd, who left the Corner Hotel with ears ringing and pores dripping.
What’s more, they left with a taste of what to expect from Violent Soho’s next full-length effort, on which the band have been diligently working for the past few months.
With ‘Like Soda’ already a fan favourite, it seems Hungry Ghost was no fluke. Instead, it was a teaser of what’s to come from a band that sit at the forefront of Australian alternative rock and might just prove its saviours.
