6

Determined to make the most of their unsocial stage time

It’s late and everyone’s tired. Having bands on after the headliners is a good wind down, but there’s still only so much you can take over a weekend. Hiding a band at the back end of the last day isn’t much of an introduction, especially one who has been so aggressively chucking flyers at people all day (I’d already had a run in earlier in the day, otherwise I wouldn’t have been inclined to stay up to see them).

Spit Like This are aggressively in-your-face, outrageously confident, and unconvincingly relying on theatricality more than any new band trying to make a name for themselves probably should. But they put in a brilliantly high-energy performance as they struggle to keep the remainders of the audience from earlier. A less confident band would have given up, bit SLT actually win through on this front.

Their singer is mesmerising, stomping around mic stand in hand, and it reminded me of The Glitterati’s performance earlier. But there’s no way you could fault the voice. Overall the performance seemed a little overdone, with the band themselves seeming outright hostile towards their audience. If they’d chilled out a bit and been a little cooler, it would have been more difficult to get distracted from their set of decent heavy glam tunes.

“This is the point in the show that divides people” announces singer Zion, as they break into a well-judged excerpt from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And suddenly their whole image seems to make sense - they’re actually better at the whole camply overdone shebang than they are playing straight (no pun intended) rock. This strange performance actually saves their set, as we get more tired/drunk people wandering in to the sounds of something familiar, and actually singing along!

Spit Like This are undeniably fantastic entertainers with strong songs and a fantastic frontman. The attitude was a little overdone for x o’clock, but… whatever. I’m not losing sleep over it.