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Live review - Witch Tripper

Date - 23.3.18
Venue - The Hairy Dog 
City - Derby
Cost - £5
 

Line up :

Primal 

28 Double

Ritual King

Witch Tripper 


This is the first time I've been to The Hairy Dog and I don't think it will be the last. The stage is as good as any small club gig I've been to the lighting effects, projector backdrop and smoke we're all used to good effect and added to the joy of watching these bands. I'll get onto those now...

First up we're Primal. I'd never seen or heard these before. A Nottingham 3 piece (drums, guitar, vocals) that when I first saw them thought 'Where's the bass?'. It turns out they don't need them because their 1 guitarist sounds like 3 with all the effects that he uses. The sound reminded me of Rival sons/Royal Blood. Not really my kind of music but not bad by any means. I got the impression they are a band that hasn't gigged very  much because the whole thing for me lacked confidence. The vocalist barely looked at the audience and spent most of the gig with his eyes closed. the guitarist looked the part but again didn't spend much time looking at much past the fret board.

Primalrockband.bandcamp.com

Next up were the reason I went to the gig in first place. The Derby based hard rock/metal band 28 Double

 
I have seen these once before and that's why I went to see them again. They open the show with my favourite track of theirs 'Feel it the most' and straight away you feel the high energy from the stage. Nick Ward (vocalist) is a natural front man and commands the stage like it was his own. We were treated to a couple of new tracks in the set that show this band have got a lot more to give. One thing that shows is they are not short of head banging riffs. Rob Tallent is a riff machine. All of this is firmly held down by the bass and drum duo Josh and Gav. Solid throughout. The set ended with 'blow the day away' a seven minute epic that while a bit slower than the rest of songs ends the set nicely and left a smile on my face that I had throughout.






Next up was Ritual King from Manchester. Another band I hadn't heard of or seen before. Their style is hard for me to describe. The best I could come up with is 'stoner doom indie grunge blues rock'. You might not think all of that goes together but it does.

 

From a performance point of view it didn't stand out as anything special but the music was interesting enough for me to pull it through. Definitely a talented bunch of musicians if not completely to my taste.




Finally we have Witch Tripper. They are one of the hardest working bands around at the moment. They give you plenty of opportunities to see them live as they gig everywhere all the time in the UK and a bit in Europe. It's right that they do this because they have a live show worth seeing. It's everything a a rock/metal band should be. Sweaty, testosterone filled, head banging and foot stomping. The shirts of off from the start and I believe that it's almost part of the their trademark having seen them before.

Similar to 28 Double before them they are an endless barrage of blues metal riffage, high energy leads and growling vocals. After the opening track 'get what you pay for' we were shown tracks from the new album you can pre order here (out April 14th). The release party for that gig is at The Salutation Inn in Nottingham on that day so get to it if you can. I know I will.



The turnout for this gig wasn't anywhere near where it should have been given the talent on display. and for only £5? You should have been there.
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