ZU baby yeah!!!!!!!!

Last night was amazing, I arrived at the venue pretty early after finishing work and nothing was going on despite being told it was a 4pm load in so off i went for a bit before our soundcheck, Zu were just finishing up their soundcheck as we all got back and they sounded BOSS!!!!!!

There should have been 4 bands playing but The Toucan party pulled out last minute leaving us to go on first again :-( not so bad this time round tho as there was a nice crowd in by the time we played and we got a warm reception (the semi circle of doom is starting to piss me off at English gigs tho) we battered through our set and it seemed to go down pretty well considering we were tonights pop act in comparison to the other bands :-)

we met some lovely people after our set and then the Exploits of Elaine came on playing an improvised noise set incorporating violin and layer upon layer of delay and effects from the guitars mixed with some mike pattonesque vocal gibberish culminating with the vocalist winding up a gramaphone and sticking his head in the speaker whilst purring and howling! Confusing, Yes! but experimental as fuck and bizarrely enjoyable!

Time to get a good spot for ZU and we weren't disappointed as a wall of noise came across the PA and we waited for the trio to take to the stage, they blasted into their first song and it was akin to being hit full on by a speeding monster truck only to get back up and be hit again, i don't think i'd prepared myself for quite how good they were gonna be, i pretty much spent the whole gig fixated on drummer Jacopo Battaglia, he was SICK!!!!
I couldn't even tell you how long they played for, i lost all track of time just being consumed by their powerful math rock/metal/jazz stylings and it was so refreshing to see a band pushing boundaries with Luca Mai' saxophone, Massimo Pupillo oscillating bass and a shithot drummer! I can't even attempt to review themy properly, all i'll say is GO AND SEE THEM, they'll blow you away! The only thing that would have made the night even better would have been if Mike Patton had been there too!!!!!!!