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After their show at last year’s Raw Power and the release of In Black And Gold, this feels like an exciting time to see them. Hey Colossus take the stage and don’t fuck about. Launching into songs from In Black And Gold without fuss and minimal time wasting, they create music that is at times brutal, and now with an addition of elegiac melancholy. There’s an incredible feeling of control from Hey Colossus at the moment, sombre violence as opposed to straight up bludgeoning.
That’s not to say there aren’t any moments of crushing noise fuckery as new songs ‘Hey, Dead Eyes’, ‘Up!’ and ‘Eat It’ mingle with Cuckoo favourite ‘Oktaver Dokkter’, braining the shit out of the crowd and rocking The Lexington like a giant baby slug on a seesaw. Singer Paul Sykes warns, “You can’t wake up / Turn on the lights again / Fallen asleep and won’t wake up” on the single ‘Sisters And Brothers’.
I have to take my glasses off at one point (I’m well rock ‘n’ roll me) to fully appreciate the riffing aceness of ‘Hot Grave’, guitarist Tim Farthing taking over vocal duty and screaming like a demented madman: “I got a hot grave, I dug it myself!” It’s just plain and simply fucking brilliant.
The album’s centrepiece ‘Black And Gold’ nearly brings the roof down with its spaghetti western doom sadness. It feels epic, as Sykes laments over sad guitar strums like an undead gunslinger while the song builds and builds with stomping bass and drums causing peaks and troughs, taking the song to a triumphant and euphoric end and rendering the crowd steaming mush.
During the set all six members gel together to create musical alchemy out of heavy, solid rock. Each musical element is distinctive and clear, locking together like the machinations of clockwork. Three guitars, bass, drums and voice. Each member pulls the sound towards some great sonic groove. You can hear exactly what each person is doing at all times. All of the parts click together and turn into something more. Hey Colossus have become gold.
What a night.
In reverse of Hey Colossus’ transformative music, by the end of their set I’m so blissfully rocked out that I’ve gone from, well not gold, but some sort of solid to shit. Anti-alchemy at it best. Now where did they put that elixir?
Read the full review here: The Moniotors
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