Autozamm, Invader Cain and November Zulu @ The Royal 19/05/2012

“The Night That Fender Ruled The World”

Invader Cain was first up with the smoke machine pumping out to their “new wave of dirty grungy Rock n Roll”, their set filled with catchy riffs and gang vocal style harmonies.

The piss poor turnout didn’t affect their performance at all, if you were judging purely on stage presence you wouldn’t of known there was only a handful of people in the bar and I have to commend them for their professionalism with this.

After some minor technical difficulties November Zulu came out guns blazing with their first song being a high energy mix of blues/funk and that heavily distorted grunty undertone we expect with heavy rock bands.

Their own blend of groove based rock brings the crowd to the front with almost incubus styled vocals and clean immaculate harmonies that didn’t go out once (trust me I was listening, that little bit of tall poppy in me was waiting for it but I was just as happy to see the boys nail every single note)  

The vocals were by far the stand out of their show, and took them beyond the “just another rock band” status we see so much today.

As a sea of smoke envelopes The Royal from the back of the room the headlining act Autozamm take the stage…

By far the most energetic performance of the night and this is no small feat on such a small stage, showing their 10 years of experience in the industry.

With every band that played the crowd got bigger and Autozamm were no different, playing what could almost be a set of their “greatest hits”- everything from their first album singles through to their latest single “the review”, and even a cover of Van Halen’s “Jump”.

They had great crowd interaction, constantly keeping a dialogue going with the crowd and each other, at one point convincing everyone in the bar to dance in exchange for shots of  jager (I’m not even kidding, they actually bought THE WHOLE BAR a round of jager shots!!!)

A personal highlight of mine from the show may have been when a friend pointed out that the drummer from Autozamm had a remarkable resemblance to “Animal” from The Muppets when he played, and I’ll be honest it was kinda true, That dude can play!!!