When Eve of Sin started playing it was all too evident that the night was going to culminate in a police raid. LOUD, anti-establishment, amoral, to-the-point, in-yer-face and blasphemous - all the right qualities for a howling metal band.
The songs all featured intimidating bass lines, smashed drums and thrashy guitars. Vocals…well… were metalcore vocals – microphone down deep-throat and a choice of guttural and throaty blasts or higher pitched screams. Bodies thrashed in a throb-mob around the stage. Occasionally you got a quieter, melodic lull in some of their songs – kinda like a lull before the storm. The feeling of suspense grabs you. You never knew quite when it would come…but come it did…and all furious hell would break loose again. As good a rush as any.
At the end of the set, the crowd eagerly looked stage-ward for more. ‘Go home now,’ the drummer advised sensibly, but then the band reconsidered and set about busting the walls and their vocal cords some more.
Somewhere in the vicinity 26 cops with batons, walkie talkies, and, most intimidating of all, notebooks with carbon paper inserts, felt the shock and came to civil society’s rescue. Tonight was the night that will be forever remembered in history as The Night of The First (But Not The Last) Underground Raid. As the vast numbers of flatfoots trooped in to the tiny club the mood went from a free-for-all good time and full-on metalcore scream fest to a thick silence. When I coldly asked the lads in kevlar jackets if there was a bomb or something, they assured me it was just a routine check. Heavy-handed twats. (Lucky I had my ID or as Chris B tells me they would have taken me down the station for a kicking.) But still, all in all it must have been a good show if the fuzz showed up.
Isobel S. Saunders