Viking Skull / McQueen

Every now and then it’s nice to see what’s going on in the fens of murky niche genres that loiter around the periphery of the music world. There are plenty of them, but in this instance the trigger’s pointing at Heavy Metal. Whilst Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper are still going on strong as the grandfathers of the genre, and newer bands like System Of A Down, Death From Above 1979 and The 80’s Matchbox B-Line Disaster continue to bring innovation to the otherwise formulaic genre, hundreds of truly terrible bands continue to pedal their tired, aggressive nonsense around toilet-bowl venues, to crowds of disaffected simpletons who revel in mindless petty violence and tinnitus inducing guitar-slavery that has as much musical sophistication as a lingering fart in a lift.

Tonight at Corporation the freaks are out in force to milk their own self-loathing under the haze of tobacco, alcohol and, judging by the smell, plenty of drugs. McQueen are worse then McFly doing an advert for McDonalds, four unpleasant women who sing about being ‘a bitch’ and guys ‘staring at my chest’. The first statement may well be true, I haven’t met the band personally, but the second certainly isn’t, unless the guy in question is a particularly big fan of gone-off pitta breads. The music is utter farce, presented in the most desperately un-ironic, un-knowing manner possible that is an absolute soul-killer. ‘I’d like to fuck HER!’ says an older man with an appalling haircut that looks more like a hat made of road kill, to his overweight, dopey-eyed mate, who is garbed in a t-shirt bearing the insight ‘FUCK’. This is about as far as the feeling goes tonight.

Viking Skull’s motto is ‘Get in, Get fucked, Get out’. Tonight they do precisely that and it’s utterly pointless. They sing about whiskey, skulls, drinking, whiskey and skulls and occasionally how rock and roll it is to drink whiskey and look at skulls. Songs like ‘Rock and Roll Suicide’ and of course, ‘Rock and Roll’, are as differentiable from one another as the two names suggest, like playing spot the difference between two turds.

Whilst the cliché metal riffs keep on coming from the stage, on the floor a large circle pit now forms. I don’t want to be a spoil-sport but it does seem kind of unfair and socially dysfunctional for the majority of ‘the pit’ to turn on the youngest member of it, repeatedly throwing him about and tripping him to the floor, despite his many attempts to break free. It’s little more than bullying – is this really what Rock and Roll has become? Thank god Take That have reformed...

FUTURE GIGS

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