PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Jamming jamming jamming! Sky Valley Mistress jammed more than Hartley’s during their seventeen song marathon set at Percy’s last night. A little gem of a venue with corrugated iron walls and roof providing great acoustics for the seismic music the band create. Forget Marvels Fantastic Four, these are the real super heroes with Starsky on guitar, Russell on bass guitar and Maxwell on drums dressed all in eye catching white offsetting the black and white apparel of lead vocalist Kayley.
The biting main riff in opener ‘Catcall’ reverberated off the walls with Kayley delivering a soulful drawl that made the song so laid back it could of been horizontal. Punchy bass guitar lines heralded banshee howls raising the bar high. Janis Joplin influences came to mind in ‘Smoke Fairy’ backed by a trippy mesmerizing groove, a tasty wah-wah solo as a full on ending finished with a seemingly endless last vocal note. ‘It Won’t Stop’ veered between sultry blues and the Doors at their heaviest. The booming bass barrage dominated ‘Hell Ain’t Got Your Hound’ laying the foundations for hard hitting freak outs including a heads down kit bashing from Maxwell.
Angelic and full on howled vocals with a jazzy musical backing threatened to shatter the overhead mirror ball during ‘Lost In Shock’. Maxwell and Russell made ‘White Night’ the heaviest song of the night with some rib rattling snare work and John Entwistle like earth moving bass lines. An over the top cover of ‘No One Knows’ by QOTSA was truly monstrous as the pace dropped slightly for the mellow opening vibes for ‘My Time Has Come’ as it progressed into a psychedelic opus powered by a lung busting vocal and a full on finish. The over the top delivery of ‘You Got Nothin’ thrashed headlong into a mini drum solo and an ear shattering climax.
A mid gig break gave the band a recharge as they returned with the heaviness of ‘Punk’, delivering on every level with some lengthy Sabbath like jams. There was no pause for breath as they hit us hard with ‘Skull And Pistons’. ‘She’s A Fever’, the first of two new songs played was a headfuck of time changes and face melting vocals. ‘No Sleep’ was a lumbering beast of a number that flew into overdrive. The foundations of Percy’s surely must have shifted a few feet due the sonic battery of ‘She Is So’. The off kilter intro to ‘Dirty Blonde Blues’ morphed into knockout punch dynamics as ‘Blue Desert’, the second new song had a spacey vibe as if the crowd were getting a group hug. Their set ended with the foot to the floor velocity of Electric Church’ that ended in an outro of ‘Bullet In The Head’ by RATM.
Set list : –
Catcall.
Smoke Fairy.
It Won’t Stop.
Hell Ain’t Got Your Hound.
Lost In Shock.
White Night.
No One Knows (QOTSA cover).
My Time Has Come.
You Got Nothin’.
Punk.
Skull And Pistons.
She’s A Fever.
No Sleep.
She Is So.
Dirty Blonde Blues.
Blue Desert.
Electric Church.
