Judas Priest recently announced that their upcoming tour would be their last. After 35 years of countless groundbreaking albums, and with the band members approaching 60, it seemed like a fitting time to finish it all. Yet news in the same month that saddened me more was that Welsh metal trio Taint would be breaking up, bringing their career to a premature end.
We could've seen this coming. Taint have been plugging away at the metal scene for 16 years without any real breakthrough, despite releasing some of the most awesome, hard-to-define metal imaginable. The album "The Ruin Of Nová Roma" is probably as good as any other British metal release in the last ten years, and the following two releases, the album "Secrets and Lies" and this year's E.P. "All Bees To The Sea" were both innovative pices of works. The official reason for the breakup was down to family commitments, but anyone who has witnessed a live gig by Taint recently will testify to a certain degree of frustration shown by the band members at their stagnation.
Although the arctic tundra that has hit a lot of Britain in the last few days was against the gig even happening, the small, innocuous looking venue of Sin City pleasantly full. For only £3 this was the most ridiculously good value for money gig imaginable (31 times cheaper than seeing a show on Justin Bieber's forthcoming UK tour incidently). The band had come full circle, having started their career in South Wales, it seemed fitting to pay tribute to their hometown by having their final show there.
Taint recently supported metal behemoths Shrinebuilder, and bassist Chris West put in a performance of such passion and intensity that his doppelgänger Scott Kelly would be proud of - between songs you could see him struggling to hold back the tears. Jimbob is a pure one man guitar army, playing every chord with the sad knowledge that it would be the last time it would be heard. The Iommi worshipping "Black Rain", the off-the-cuff ripping soloing in "The Sound-Out Competition" and the riff feast that is "I'm Going to Kill Henry Ford" were a pure delight to digest. Not forgetting Alex Harries underpinning it all with some awesome grooves and fills. For a three piece Taint are very intense and the sound is never less than full. Another notable characteristic about Taint's music is that the songs are rarely stuctured in a conventional sense, yet the riffs ebb and flow effortlessly and work a treat in the live setting.
It's an ironic tragedy that as Taint hang up their instruments their compatriots Bullet For My Valentine begin a UK Arena tour. Whereas their awful brand of generic Metallica-wannabe haircut metal rolls on, backed by the syncophatic mainstream metal media, three truly talented induviduals end their journey.
Jack
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment