Beastwars Live at San Fran, Wellington 10/10/2014

I was finding it hard to believe that it’d been over 18 months since I last saw Beastwars play in Wellington as I stumbled on down to the newly refurbished San Fran in Wellington last week. I’m not sure why it’d taken me so long to go back to Wellington’s number one metal (or at least heavy rock) band, especially since they’d never disappointed me before.

I was expecting a big show from them, having just come off the back of a quick tour of Australia, then straight into a four stop tour of New Zealand with American sludge band Windhand. This was the second-to-last night of the tour, and a homecoming of sorts, so I had a feeling it was going to be a good one.

Expecting a typical Wellington show I turned up late and missed the opening act Mermaidens, who by all accounts played a super set of dreamy, jangly, droney sort of pop rock.  I’ll be making an effort to catch them in the near future.

As soon as they hit the stage it was easy to see that this was a band that had just kept improving since I last saw them, and that’s no easy feat.  Everything was just right as the massive riffs rolled over the sold out crowd, and it was like coming home. There was a comfortableness to seeing Matt Hyde stalk the stage, glaring menacingly into nothingness, with arms thrown into the air, growling out his lyrics – or as comfortable as that’s ever going to be. The rest of the band drove, nay, pummelled us with each song, as we heard from their whole catalogue; they played better than I’ve seen them play before – whether it’s a combination of being home, or the stint of touring they’ve just done, I don’t know, but whatever it was, it’s really showing in their live performance.

We stumbled out afterwards into the Wellington streets, dazed, more than a little deaf, and in awe of our hometown heroes, just like every Beastwars show before it.

Oh, and Windhand from America also played, but this review is really about the awesome power of New Zealand’s own Beastwars.  To be fair I wasn’t overly familiar with Windhand’s music (okay, okay, I’d never heard them before) but I was impressed enough to check out their latest album Soma afterwards.  They were heavy, but not really overpoweringly so, and had a spacey, psychedelic feel to them (I guess that’s the stoner part of stoner-doom) that gave the music a really interesting depth. Did I mention they were also heavy…