I'd never even heard Kill II This, but I was roped into this one by Stuart, who insisted that all our band go and 'check out the competition'. Three of us came, and by the time Visitor had finished I was shitting bricks.
They are seriously the heaviest band I've ever seen live (I've seen SYL, Metallica, Machine Head, Slayer, etc.) but they were good for it too.
Not sounding in the slightest bit original, they write songs that every band from Machine Head to Psycore play for fun. But then Visitor do it so well. Fantastic stuff - they're so tight they'd bleed if you rubbed hard against them, their bassist looks like a hippy and their drummer has possibly the biggest kit outside of Igor Cavalera's personal drum truck, and this side of Gene Hoglan's enormous arse.
Which brings me onto the next support band, 4 Arsed Monkey (good link there, hope you noticed that). What a pile of arse they were. Someone called them the 4 Arse Mancunians - but as their anal (ho ho) vocalist was Irish I couldn't truthfully agree. 4 Arse Holes anyone? Annalise seemed keen(Doesn't she always? - Ming), but I just thought they were shit. In essence, very poo (sic) Napalm Death - bad vocals, unimpressive guitar and boring drums with nowhere near enough double-bass-pedalling. Not good, and the rapidly emigrating audience obviously agreed.
By the time Kill II This sail onstage, my fears of band insignificance are quoshed, and the wanderers have returned from their voyage to the Serpent. As the initial squeals and beats come from the onstage MiniDisc, I am already beginning to be impressed. Then the lights come up, and the scariest pair of eyes this side of It are staring from the stage. Mark Mynett, their 6'6" guitarist, greets the crowd with a frightening grin on his face and the most erect beard you're ever likely to see (at least until the next 'National Stick Your Beard Up Day' in the Serpent). And then the band kicks in, thus starting seventy minutes of rabid groovemetal that holds you near the end of its toe before slamming a steel-toecapped boot up your backside (unless that was Annalise's boot as some sort of punishment for me slagging off Arse Arse Arse Arse Monkey).
Four tracks from 'Deviate', and the crowd (well me at any rate) are getting well into this stuff. They play an oldie from their first album, then return to the new stuff with 'Funeral Around Your Heart', a refreshing song on the album but a little out of place on stage. Still, following that with 'Kill Your Gods' they quickly return to pace and finish in Pitchshifter-esque style informing us that we 'should go mental' for the last track. We do.
