I know I'm a little bit late with this but whatever, I've been enjoying the sun and sleeping in the dark in work.The other night we went to Birmingham, England's Second City, to check out Today Is The Day on their latest tour, and although I'm going to do a little review in a bit, I'm sure that I won't be saying too much other than what SJW has already said in his post, other than voicing my opinions.
I'll fill you in a bit on the travelling and stuff though.
We left Liverpool around 3ish, and travelled down the motorway listening to Saxon and Iron Maiden, drinking cold cans of beer that had been purchased just before we left.
Well, when I say we, me and Skum were, I felt a bit sly on SJW cos he had to drive.
We swung into a service station on the way to pick up some porn; for some reason we can't travel anywhere without buying some to laugh at in the car, and plus the fact it's always amusing when you have to get served with a mucky book by a young girl.
About 6 miles outside Birmingham, Ste noticed that the police were tailing us. Does police have a capital p? I'm not giving them one anyway. Just as we went to turn off the motorway they turned on the flashing lights and pulled us over.
For some reason, laughing hysterically (probably because we were a bit smashed by now), Skum and I started trying to hide the porn under the seats; so obviously when the police came and opened the door they wanted to know what we were hiding.
"Just this filth mate" we said.
"That's alright, you can read....Naughty Neighbours you know",
After all, three lads from Liverpool (the rear of Thee Clawmobile makes it perfectly obvious where we have travelled from) all dressed in black and wearing sunglasses, drinking lager and listening to loud music, well we were asking to be pulled over weren't we?
Anyway, they went off and checked our names on their little computer, got shocked that we were clean (not as shocked as I was) and put their lights back on and fucked off quickly, like there was something infinitely more interesting happening a few miles down the motorway.
Right then, off into Birmingham it is.
For some reason, most of the cities in England now all have one-way road systems in place in the centre, which is probably awesome for everyone who lives there but is really shit for people from another city trying to get through it without directions.
By this time, Skum and I were well oiled, and after about the four millionth time going around the chinese pagoda roundabout we decided to swallow our pride and ask a policewoman for directions, but she just confused matters even more. I think she did anyway, me and Skum were too busy pissing about to really take any notice. I think SJW was ready to explode at this point. So, we went off again, back around the pagoda, and we spotted a "Rock and Roll Cocktail Bar", so Ste parked up and sent an already drunk Skum and Patchie in to ask for directions.
This was a bad idea.
I bet you can't guess what happened.
That's right, we walked in, and instead of asking for directions, we bought two pints of Lager and started wondering if they had Appetite for Destruction in the jukebox.
I'd like to take this moment to apologise to Ste, who obviously has the patience of a saint, and I like to think that I made up for it by phoning my girlfriend and having her call up Google Maps on the PC and give us directions on speakerphone.
So we arrived at the venue, and sat outside talking to the lads from Complete Failure, then went in and spoke to Steve Austin, and then watched three of the four bands who were playing, as we'd already missed ???? due to getting lost.
If you want a proper review, check out Ste's post, but here's my opinions:
Complete Failure were awesome Grindcore-ish noise with an amazing drummer. Sort of Nasum/Pig Destroyer and even TITD-ish, got to check out some of their stuff now and make it mine.
Jucifer were not my thing at all. I'd heard people saying that they had been to earlier dates on this tour and that Jucifer were better than TITD, sorry but I just don't see it. During the set I went outside to get an update on the Champion's League final in the football over the phone, it was a penalty shootout you see.
Today Is The Day - Good mix of stuff from the lads here; Complete Failure's drummer was helping them out and it was an intense, sweaty, fucking dark show. The lads put everything they had into this performance, just a shame hardly anyone turned up for it.
Finishing with an encore that started off with a bit of their cover of Wicked Game... I felt privileged to have been there, even if it did take three hours of making someone drive round a Chinese Pagoda and almost making the veins in his neck explode to get there.
Afterwards we went outside with Joe from Complete Failure and annoyed the emos who had been to the show next door, laughing at their hair and bumming cigarettes off them.
