"Nicholaus Arson plays his guitar so hard that blood is flecked across the fretboard and Howlin' Pelle rants, yells, leaps, preaches, kicks and grabs" - Matthew Sheret
"Hands?"
CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP
"Voices?"
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAMM!!!
"Good, everything seems to be in working order"
So it starts.
Sweat slicked the walls in the trendy/grotty/backroom surrounds of Hoxton Bar and Kitchen. Rammed with an immense PA the noise rattled hinges and bar-top decanters while five besuited Europeans strutted and demanded attention. In these opening moments only the charisma of Howlin' Pelle carried the room and one must admit he's a very charismatic man.
These low-keys shows - they played The 100 Club the previous night - mark a massive break for a band who have played Brixton three times. The idea is to build up a groundswell of excitement about the forthcoming new album, to win the fans back after their sojourn and to give us all some special memories...or scars. They wear us will, these Swedes, for whom performance is everything: Dr. Matt Destruction seems to make love onstage, fingering his bass with sexual passion while Vigilante Carlstroem's jutters and improbably precise playing provide a tight metronomic order to the band. Chris Dangerous beats the living daylights out of his drumskins, Nicholaus Arson plays his guitar so hard that blood is flecked and smeared across the fretboard and Howlin' Pelle...
...Howlin' Pelle (where to start?)... Howlin' Pelle rants and yells and leaps and preaches and kicks and grabs. He punches, he clambers, he stares and he attacks before staring and attacking again. Howlin' Pelle can sing verses on his back as the crowd hold him high, can urge us 'Shoreditch types' into uttering a primal scream and can string us around his vicious little finger. Howlin' Pelle literally controls the room. It's ecstatic.
It ends, too too brief, with his words.
"London Town, you must go and tell everyone that The Hives are back!"
- Matthew Sheret
