Where: Whammy! Bar, Auckland, New Zealand.
When: 6th March 2022

Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats are mind twisters. They ripped through Whammy! Bar’s ears last night with their unique blend of heavy, doom metal with a 60s psychedelic rock edge. Last playing in Aotearoa in 2014, the Englanders have gone from strength to strength producing five albums, the latest of which being Wasteland.

And if there’s anything that screeches to mind it’s exactly that. Their sound conjures a dystopian sense of deserted plains melting into the horizon, crows cawing alongside some weather-torn road, wavering under heat with Hunter S Thompson speeding down it listening to Electric Wizard. The night should be a trip.

Arriving a little after 8.30, the crowd was small, tame, mostly bearded with tattoos, studs, bandanas and patches galore – one member I spoke to described it as a hairy fest. Preparing our ears for the night was local act Ounce. Catching these guys at The Experiment last year, I knew to keep my distance. Two drummers, percussion, guitar and bass slammed our faces with battering punky metal energy. Screaming harmonics ricocheted throughout the venue like heavy artillery as roaring wah bends took the form of a distorted overlord. The one-hand-in-pocket head-banging technique took precedence with Ounce finishing up their set around 9.30.

By the time Uncle Acid began their sound check the familiar Whammy! Bar setting was stuffed to full capacity. Beers started to flow, eyes began to widen, and feet shuffled forward as the stage was lit a dark crimson that beckoned a sampled transmission sounding like something from a Kubrick film. Weird bleeps and bloops swirled on an ambient dissonance when, quite out of the blue, the four-piece punched in with ‘I See Through You’.

Off the bat, the tones and feel of the mix was great. Kevin Starrs’ lead guitar drove closely behind wailing, slightly quiet, vocal swoons alongside Vaughn Stokes’ backing vocals and rhythm guitar, Jon Rice’s drumming and Justin Smith’s bass belting. Within minutes the crowd surfers were already catching waves at the front as the band’s hair flung in all its glory, bouncing red light around the darkly lit crowd.

After asking for the mic levels to be raised, siren calls from feedback ushered in the heavier knock of ‘Death’s Door’ followed by the groovier ‘Shockwave City’. Groovy is the word here. Dark swinging riffs dirtied the ears with grimy licks that shuffled in and out of unrelenting drum grooves that got the more static heads banging.

Slowly turning the set into a hazy exercise in distortion, ‘Crystal Spiders’ came crawling in with elements more akin to stoner rock, evoking the Desert Session albums and bands like Kyuss. Hands began to hold onto pillars, walls and roofs as the track’s fuzzy verse crept up into the eclectic chorus. This energy was sustained by ‘Pusher Man’, a slower, sludgy number that envelops the ears in phantom guitar harmonies and otherworldly vocals that bring to mind the eeriness of Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan.

Crowd favourite ‘I’ll Cut You Down’ came harrowing down next. Slicing through the mix saw Starrs’ punky guitar puttering like an old diesel car before changing gear into the tracks coaxed galloping drive. ‘Melody Lane’ got some hips swaying, bouncing back and forth to the psychedelic swag of the hypnotic main riff. Somewhat calming the audience down, Uncle Acid then spooked everyone back up with ‘No Return’. Proclaiming “one more song before you go back to your graves,” Starrs’ foreboded a bludgeoning finish as his guitar stalked into earshot. Adding Smith’s bounding, heart-grabbing bass lines and Rice’s riding clockwork rhythms, the track surged over the crowd flooding the venue in a fuzzy sonic whirlpool that just kept spiralling into a heavier and heavier place.

We arrived at this dystopian wasteland, where the lyrics “there’s just no return” and “your mind is dead” cried over the now mad, moshing pit of hairy festivities. This vibe was soon abandoned as the band quickly slipped off the stage and soft, lonely piano rung out over the speakers. Minds recollecting, the crowd slowly plodded back to their graves.

Playing at Obey The Riff festival today in Wellington, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats is worth your time. Their live shows bring out colours that the albums, which span over a decade now, do not seem to draw so clearly. There’s metal, rock, psychedelia, punky blast beats, funky bass lines, stoner fuzz tones, grungy sludge and mind-bending doom that will leave you forgetting how you got to the gig in the first place.

Written for Ambient Light