Metro Manila Aide – SSS – Liverpool Korova – March 1st 2009
The excitedly assembled audience has suddenly tensed up as an incoherently, angry-as-fuck drunk who’s clearly been on the Castlemaine all day, stumbles noisily in. Luckily, Metro Manila Aide are angry-as-fuck too, but thankfully possess more charm and articulacy than this 25-stone worth of gob who is heckling them.
Combining the energy and power of early Suicidal Tendencies and the powerful, rambling prosaic’s of Radio Ethiopia-era Patti Smith, MMA are astoundingly confrontational and delectably damning. Frontman, Paul McBride bounds through the audience like a reneged preacher, grabbing audience members by the head and pushing them down onto the floor. ‘Geeerroofff the stage lad, yer shit!’ wails the heckler, during opening salvo The Plague, an atmospheric and curt piece of prog-punk ironically bashing the inherent negativity of the home towns populace.
Brooding and altruistic, their passion and energy is intoxicating and fresh. The heckler, meanwhile, is still shouting proclamations to the contrary but thankfully disappears by the time SSS take to the stage. And not a second too soon either – a mere few seconds worth of SSS’s swelteringly fast-paced thrash-metal could devour a man like that whole. SSS are something of a Liverpool thrash institution – a fact exemplified by the heaving pit of fans who never miss a lyric to chant along with, or a pummelling drum-roll to pound their fists to. The band repeatedly proves their prowess for the heavy and the unrelenting – the entirety of the set is flawless, feveerish and taut. Each song a vigorously heavy purr of disorder that pounds inexorably.
The bands finely tuned set is heightened by a tight and continual banter with the local audience, constantly reminding one to ‘Pull yer keck’s up lad’ and providing the sort of comedic observations about life in Liverpool which are rewarded with high-fives and cheers which echo on long after the bands noisy and emphatic finale . [9]
Words: Amy Roberts
Pictures: Sakura
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