LIVE :::: Hellbent and Hammered at the Dublin Castle, 23/11/09

Everyone knows Camden is the place to go for small venues, unsigned bands and raucous rock music until 3am.

Hellbent & Hammered rocking out

Arguably the best spot in Camden, though, is the Dublin Castle, a little Mecca for indie-kids and rockers alike. Last Monday saw it play host to local rockers Hellbent and Hammered, backed up by the normal mix of unsigned night acts – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Opening the night were Watford boys This Life Scandal, a strangely incongruous Goo Goo Dolls influenced stadium-rock band on a heavy metal bill. Still, they held their end of the bargain up well: a tight, rocky set was capped by a lead singer on excellent form, and the band filled the stage superbly. The drummer even managed to squeeze a bit of rock posing in around the set list, although the effort of multi-tasking sometimes threw his rhythm a little. Still, ones to watch: although some of their tracks will sound a little over-familiar to old-school U2 fans, that’s not necessarily a bad band to be compared to.

This Life Scandal

And then came something completely different. 81dB, a successful rock group in their native Italy, joined the bill as part of their European tour. Although the band are used to bigger venues back home they didn’t seem to mind, liftingthe roof with a folk-tinged metal with the playfulness of System of a Down, only without all the bullshit and cannabis. The guitarist swapped constantly from a conventional axe to a bouzouki, interspersing heavyweight riffs with high-speed fingerwork, and closing track ‘Supercalifragulisticexpialidocious’ was a genuine joy. Superb.

They were followed by Cumbrian electro-metallers OurFamous Dead, sounding a little like an early Lostprophets – if you’ve ever sat through the first cut of ‘thefakesoundofprogress’, you’ll know that’s not really a compliment. The band had recently acquired a new pair of guitarists, and it showed: although the front-man and keyboard player were both throwing themselves around, the axe-men spent the gig huddled at the back, in the shadows, as if hoping we wouldn’t notice them. Things rapidly descended into a 3-chord electro-punk mess, capped by the most ill-advised Prodigy cover I think I’ve ever encountered, and the only person more grateful than the audience when the show ended was the lead guitarist.

The tone changed again with the arrival on-stage of Hellbent & Hammered, who seemed to have been enjoying their rider a little too much for their late billing. Still, they pulled off a decent show, despite the bassist having lost the powers of speech and eyesight sometime around 9pm. Their big, bluesy metal wall of sound kicked off the first mosh-pit of the night, and lead singer Ryan le Roux’s bassy snarling hit the heavy-metal-swagger spot nicely. Still, don’t take my word for it – the show was recorded, so go and check it out for yourself.