This show was the first night of the UK leg of Retrovirus' current extensive European tour. It took place in the smaller upstairs room of the Islington Academy; a venue which has the decency to resemble a sleazy rock club even if adverts explaining their choice of Cola and 3 for the price of 2 deals on bottles of Hooch suggest more of a student bar vibe.
We took our places early enough to see the unannounced opening act who isn't named on the fliers or website and didn't introduce himself at any point so I'm going to call him MC What The Fuc$. He pressed play on his laptop like a pro, which considering he looked like he just been dragged out of a doorway in the middle of a month long tweaking binge was almost an achievement. He proceeded to rap his way through a set (thankfully only 3 songs long) featuring some of the most misogynistic, depressing as all hell, yet trying to be sleazy rap you could fear to hear.
Even though he looked like no woman in her wrong mind could fancy him, he bragged of being chased by a "bitch that found him irresistible" before he raped them and then getting away with it by buying them off. It was like he was trying to be the most outre Lydia support act ever. But he had none of the pathos and humour Mr Emilio Cubiero had and didn't come close to what he did with a roll of toilet paper. He also had elements of the sort of rants and blogs Gene Gregorits came out with in the months leading up to his being thrown into the prison cell he currently resides in.
The drug and rape fantasy shtick he delivered like he thought he was a white, more Jewish New York version of Eminem hanging out in Tompkins Square Park when it was a drug ravaged hell hole grew old very quickly. The only thing that kept it interesting was having Lydia Lunch come and stand right in front of us as she seemed to be quite into it. I was happy when he walked off after the third rap and if I don't find out who he was I really won't be bothered.
Next on were Nought with a Scandinavian line through the o!! I was seeing them for a second time, as they opened for Big Sexy Noise, round the corner at the Lexington back in March. They are a 4 piece who play instrumental prog funk rock.
They opened with a monstrously complicated jazz-funk fusion number that was sort of like Soft Machine going Krautrock on us as the drummer went wild, sounding like a cross between Robert Wyatt's drumming in Soft Machine and Michael Shrieve. It was sort of dislocated dance music.
They then went and got properly Fripped out with a super, over complicated piece with a bunch of false endings and mind-melding guitar and keyboard parts with insistent bass playing helping to keep this mad but very precise music anchored down. It did so too - just about. There was then a long piece that reminded me of something off of one of the Isildurs Bane Mind Pass albums which is about as an obscure reference as they come.
They then did some stop-start keyboard-led madness that left me a little bit cold as they brought it to a close and thanked us and left. Well I liked them a lot more this time than I did in March so they must have improved somewhat.
It was then time for Lydia Lunch and Retrovirus to hit the stage. They opened with a monstrous version of Snakepit Breakdown wherein Weasel Walter treated his guitar like it was a gun strafing us while Bob Bert built a wall of furious power drumming to keep it all there as Lydia's vocals almost got subsumed into the noise.
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As this is Lydia's band for playing her classics we then got 3 X 3 played at a breakneck pace with Tim Dahl's bass runs getting every bit as frantic as Weasel Walter's guitar manglings, while Lydia intoned the lyrics and brought the angst it needed. Mechanical Flattery was a full on dirty noise apocalypse full of pain and twisted guitar notes.
Love Split With Blood was like the most intense fight you could Imagine lovers having. The sort where it's inevitable the police will be called by the neighbours and the music that goes with it was just really intense and dark with immense drumming. Some Boys was as darkly violent as any song you'll hear about murder and the urge to kill that undoubtedly possesses some boys.
Not sure what the next song wa,s other than Lydia mumbled that it was a cover of something I didn't recognise. It was intense and nasty as all hell as Weasel Walter contorted his guitar to get all the right noises out of it.
Then Lydia unleashed her version of Final Solution: a brilliant take on the Rocket From The Tombs/Pere Ubu classic and she performed it more convincingly than Pere Ubu did when I saw them in this very room a few years ago. They played it mainly in the same style as The Slags classic early 90's cover of it only darker and more intense than that. It was brilliant and a real highlight. As was Still Burning the Shotgun Wedding: a classic which was played in a similar super intense noise meltdown style to the Shotgun Wedding show I saw at the New Cross Venue all those years ago rather than the more laid back version they indulged in at Then Underworld in Camden.
Afraid Of Your Company had a typical Lydia intro to it before they made it (both musically and lyrically) clear what a danger to us you really are and why we need to stay away from you. They then covered another of Lydia's heroes, yes Alice Cooper and his Black Juju. Inevitably, Lydia brings out all the darkness in the song and just nails it as Tim Dahl goes nuts on his bass. They closed with the old Harry Crews classic Gospel Singer, only played a little bit faster than Big Sexy Noise would have done it. Needless to say, it sounded immensely dark and twisted.
The crowd cheered enough to get a reasonably rare encore out of Lydia and Retrovirus. This was an incredible version of Suicide's Frankie Teardrop where Bob Bert turned himself into a human drum machine, while Tim Dahl did all sorts of strange things on his bass to make it sound like Marty Rev's synths as Weasel Walter took care of all the other noises you needed to prove we are all Frankies. It was great to hear Lydia doing her version live and it was a perfect end to a great show. Indeed, Retrovirus are well worth catching live as they more than do justice to some of the material Lydia has accumulated during her 40 year career as an underground legend.
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