Gig Review: Snakes Don't Belong in Alaska, Haiku Waifu, Fead, Sigma 3 Outpost Liverpool — 13 Nov 22

FEAD fill the stage and emanate a deep resonant almost industrial come shoe gazing psychedelia. Its deep and heavy with My Blood Valentine melodies hidden in their sonic outpourings. The songs are interesting in their own right and there’s real skill in the way they perform them. Its kept low and sinister and works on the subconscious. A few songs in I’m starting to realise that there is something majestic about their music, its big sounding, almost referencing Sun O))) at times and then veering off into more melodic but still dark alleyways.

Haiku Waifu keep telling the audience how shit they are, how they’ve hardly practiced and how rubbish their music is. The joke is blown apart when they play. Its tight, loud and fast noise terrorism. Its brutal but underneath its fantastically well played with some amazing drumming and equally fantastic guitar skills on display. They hit hard musically, chat and joke in a truly entertaining manner with the audience and then throw in another slice of heavy noise. When they hit full speed and volume, its breathtaking.

Snakes Don’t Belong in Alaska are one of the best kept secrets of a secretive national psychedelic scene. They’ve been dropping albums out of their creative consciousness for years and turning up at psych festivals all over the country for a long time. They turn up in Liverpool on the back of a small national tour thats taken them from Scotland, via their hometown of Newcastle down as far south as the legendary Hotbox venue in Chelmsford in support of their latest album Interstellic Psychedelic out now on the Up In Her Room Label. Their music is a subtle slow burn that builds up in intensity slowly but surely. They posses a telepathic drums and bass rhythm section that notch it up simultaneously whilst sonics from the guitar fill the air adding an spaced out ambience to the overall sound. Its the rhythm that does it though, its never stops but keeps getting fiercer and busier forcing its way into your head until when it eventually stops it leaves an immense gap and feeling of emptiness.