Love Buzzard LIVE @ Amersham Arms, London
11.07.2015
★★★★☆
Alejandro De Luna
Love Buzzard? I´ve never heard of them till one week before the show when a friend sent me a message: “hey fancy these mad punks at Amersham Arms on 11th?”. I see “mad”, “punks” and an unknown pub written in the same sentence and I am almost convinced. But after listening to ‘Cash’, Buzzard´s new single, I am definitely persuaded to give these guys a try. The venue is desolated and grungy – the typical and perfect scenery for a rainy Saturday night gig when you venture to discover an obscure garage/punk band in London. The place? The Amersham Arms, a ragged and well-worn armchair pub in New Cross, a south and far away district that I barely visit and that seems unfriendly at night, but with signs of the obnoxious gentrification of the capital. I enter to the pub and order a pint. Then light a cigarette until I wait to be surprised.
Preceded by a frantic London duo called Vodoo Binmen and another pint, Love Buzzard opens their set with a voracious riff, maddening percussive thunders and, lots of speed – like if they are in a defiant mission to destroy your tympanum. It´s punk music that flirts with garage and the uncontrollable velocity of hardcore punk – the kind of music that Cobain used to enjoy. Drumfires, fuzz, growls, more distortion and fast vocals with a fuck-the-verse/chorus-structure that hits your skull over and over until tinnitus starts to play a lovely part.
The pair from Leeds/Guilford plays what your mother hates and the kind of distorted noise that I would describe as one of the most direct and confrontational expressions of what we call music – especially when you are one of the scanty souls in the audience. Just 2 hairy individuals playing loud and fast rock ‘n’ roll. Maybe there was no better place to be in London on a Saturday night for a fiver?
