A Shirt on Sunday: HRH Doom Vs HRH Stoner – 29-30/9/2018 – O2 Academy, Sheffield

Day two of the festival, in which a spaceship is located and the best bands are once more on the second stage.

An enjoyable morning wandering around Sheffield, where I find a TARDIS – different model to the usual blue one, but a TARDIS nonetheless:

Desolate Pathway supply the Spinal Tap musical moment of the festival. 'Medusa' is a catalogue of Sabbath riffs with all the usual lyrical clichés of being turned to stone. They do get points for a female drummer who does serious business, and the singer isn't bad. But, "This one's about being seduced by a vampire!" - pub o'clock.

Back for Morass of Molasses, who are quite fun. The singer has a reduced guitar with 5 strings and either a MIDI pickup or a pedal that makes organ sounds. This gives them some tonal variety which comes out well on songs like "Serpentine" and "Wrath of Aphrodite". He also has a very southern rock straggly beard.

Conjurer are 'orrible. Two throaty-shouty guitarists and quite tedious material. They have possibly the worst quiet breakdown moments I've ever heard: irrelevant chords strummed with no sense of rhythm or timbre. After two songs I leave the building and manage to score a coffee as everyone closes shop for the afternoon.
I kill an hour and return for Bong Cauldron. They're a Doom band, and an hour later I can't remember what they were like.

First upstairs band of the day is Buffalode. Drum 'n' guitar. Thankfully, they have latched on to the formula that made White Stripes so fabulous: Keep the two instruments away from each other's rhythmic territory. And have gargantuan riffs that start in the lower register of the guitar. There's a song about what it's like to be a mollusc, which is something you don't hear every day.

Spirits suitably restored it's downstairs for Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard. They aren't as good as their name. The singer is a woman, which is a refreshing change, but the band is dull and her voice is low in the mix, and rather thin. She has a keyboard and some pedals which add a bit of texture, but the overall effect is of Claire Grogan fronting Hawkwind.

But they're better than Ba'al who are upstairs make throaty-shouty noises.
Psychedelic Witchcraft are Euro-metal, and their female singer has some oomph. But it fails to grab me: the riffs are forgettable and I'm hungry.

Beer-and-a-burger later, I've missed Tuskar, and Conan are being neanderthal on the main stage, so it's upstairs for 1968.
Before they start I chat to some Spaniards in Hawaiian shirts and fright wigs. This distracts me from noticing the guitarist has TWO Marshall stacks in a room where a practice amp is enough. The mind boggles at the impending volume.
But... One band pays for all. 1968 are a cross between Motörhead very early Aerosmith, which is a very, very good thing. And the guitar is loud, but mostly it's clear! The lad himself looks like he's not happy with his playing but we in the audience are loving it. Haven't the faintest idea what the songs are about - the vocalist talks fast in a brummie accent I can't penetrate, but the package is fabulous.

I stagger out at the end and bumble downstairs. Crowbar are doing the doom thing and all it could possibly do is ruin my mood, so I amble to a pub and head for the hotel.
This is not a festival I'll return to - there's just not enough stylistic freedom within the genres to make it worthwhile, but I got a couple of bands to look out for in the future.

Videos

Lovingly ripped off from around the web, so attribution with the uploaders. The photos above are all mine.

Morass of Molasses

Buffalode

1968