The Hyde Park Book Club is a subterranean venue located beneath a student-friendly bar and vegan eatery, making it the perfect place for an evening of sonic abuse. We are as prepared as we can be, but something tells me we are not quite ready, and this is underlined as we hear the rumblings and tortured screams emanating from the soundcheck under the venue.
First up, though, is the incredible Hidden Mothers, who are, for once, the more chilled out prospect on this bill, relatively speaking at least. Kicking off with the awesome ‘Defanged’, they waste no time flooding the room with their incredible blackened post-hardcore sound. Album highlight ‘Still Sickness’ follows and further cements the reason why their ‘Erosion/Avulsion’ album appeared on so many “Album of the Year” lists in 2024. We’ve seen Hidden Mothers on small stages and on huge festival stages, and they are always mesmerising. Tonight is no different. The Sheffield quartet are a slick machine these days, consistently brilliant. Violet Sun wraps its arms around us, Haze bids us a fond farewell, and we are very conscious about using up our word count on the opening act…again!
Host Body are not dealing in tenderness tonight, introducing themselves with spluttering power electronics and lurching into gnarly power violence. It’s a confrontational and exciting opening, their frontman facing the band on the floor in front of the stage before turning to scream in our faces. Bursts of electronics permeate the wall of noise, evoking the likes of Full of Hell. Host Body do seem to be the Bristolian answer to that kind of visceral attack. The only time we are addressed is to tell us that there is merchandise, and you get the feeling that they don’t really do a good job of creating a good time vibe; instead, they have a very hard time vibe.
If Host Body is confrontation personified, Meth are straight up harrowing. Frontman Seb Alvarez is also in the audience, but he’s also on the floor, screaming into the concrete whilst the band churn and writhe on stage. It’s a desperate cry and a state of euphoria at the same time, leaving the crowd in stunned silence, wondering what they just witnessed. This is only their opening track. Meth operates in an area of brooding unease where everything is potentially hazardous and could explode at any time. Songs in the traditional sense enter and leave as if drifting through the layers of agonised discordance that engulfs them, ultimately leaving any notion of melody battered and bleeding.
To say Meth is a challenging band is to underplay them. This is power violence taken to the realms of abstraction. The only place there isn’t a vocal performed is onstage, this includes running through the crowd into the dressing room and slamming the door behind him. Last year’s Shame album was a record for lovers of the outer reaches of hardcore adjacent experimentation; the live re-enactment is a wholly more disturbing entity and feels utterly dangerous at times. All of this is, of course, why Meth are genuinely brilliant. I’d urge anyone who likes to be pushed to their limits to go and watch this band as soon as they can.
Review By George Miller – https://www.facebook.com/oneflamemedia
Photos By: Thomas Hazlehurst – https://www.instagram.com/tommytogtog/
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Hidden Mothers
Host Body
Meth
