Heading South

support The Marvins
author PP date 14/04/05 venue Lades Kælder, Copenhagen, DEN

Lades Kaelder is a small bar in the midst of Copenhagen. It's known for its daily live music and tonight was no different. Or it was different in terms of the band quality. Tonight's headliner was the Danish flagship for hardcore punk, Heading South, with the more unknown support act The Marvins. Around the miniature corner of the bar, which can barely be called a stage, roughly 25 fans can fit to watch the band, and maximum 10 of them can be moshing or else the place would be in a permanent state of re-building.

The Marvins

The first band to hit the stage, The Marvins, didn't impress me at all. Their vocalist looked unmistakably like a Will Smith styled cowboy directly from the Wild Wild West - only that he was white. And their style of punk had a country/wildwest feel in it as well. The problem was, that either their equipment or their vocalist sucked ass. Because it was impossible to make out any lyrics or vocals, with or without earplugs. This resulted into a constant stream of monotoneus, even somewhat annoying, noise from whenever their vocalist sang into the Microphone, which in turn seemed to be an imitation of early microphones used in PR-speeches about 50 years back. But tonight it's 2005, and The Marvins just didn't get it right. Utterly average and boring show in general. Although it did beat Hoobastank's shit.

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Heading South

Heading South's turn was later. Even though the writer was pretty god damn wasted by the point of their first song, it still rocked twice as hard as on the album. Hardcore punk experienced at a distance of about 1 metre from the band, who plays with more intensity than you when you are running away from crazy English football hooligans, is somewhat a unique experience (Unless, of course, you see the same band at another point in time). Their set included all the audience favorites like "Stop Complaining", "Face Reality", "She Could Say" and tonnes of other great songs. They played for nearly an hour almost nonstop. And you know what else was nonstop in the gig? The moshpit. It was smaller than any of the ones I've experienced, but it was twice as intense as, for example, The Dillinger Escape Plan 30-metre radius most pit in December.

What more can I say about this gig? The sound was unmatched by the bigger venues, vocals were clear (as clear as they can be, considering it's hardcore punk), the speed was amazing and the band on stage was astonishingly active, given the size of that thing. All in all, Heading South is the best thing happened to Danish punk since... well, since a very, very long time at least. If you have a chance to see them, and if you like your punk like Sick Of It All, Anti-Flag and AFI, go do it. Specially in a small, intimate venue. Great stuff

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