Sound Circus, Bournemouth
On this bleak Winter’s evening, the Sound Circus is opening its doors for one of their regular pre-club live music Rock nights featuring three local bands. The venue is one of the great survivors and has had live music featured here since I was in my early teens (A very long time ago, then called the Hot House). They have hosted bands such as Blur, Radiohead, The Selector, The Primitives, Mega City Four, Echo and the Bunnymen and many more.
The first band on the stage tonight is “Regional One” a five-piece Rock band from Bournemouth who take influences from a multitude of bands to bring together their own original sound. Despite it being early frontman Simon Ball does his best to warm up the sparse crowd with plenty of energy and enthusiastic encouragement. The band seem to be going through a metamorphosis with their new songs sounding so different to their older tunes. Particularly “Dead Silence” and the hard-hitting new single “Addicted of Chaos”, which features a two guitar wall of noise with some decent vocal variants. They leave the stage after a solid 35 minutes or so with a lot of positive support from the audience.
The “Black Tree Vultures” is a relatively new band featuring former members of Voodoo Vegas and Tripwire. They have only a handful of gigs under their belts so far, but open confidently and show the Sound Circus crowd what they are made of. Singer Celyn Beynon impresses right from the start with some excellent vocal abilities, he looks a little like Corey Taylor and powerfully delivers in all areas. The band’s debut EP “Sanity Isn’t Perfect” is due out early in the New Year and features some great groove-laden tunes. They only have one guitar player, and what a guitar player he is!! Aaron Hammersley was born to play guitar; a real natural talent who creates a big sound skilfully using various effects, which are ably backed with a very solid rhythm section of Jonno and Coner. We are treated to an impressive version of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” as well as a great tune called “Memories” which really hits the spot. The four have created some serious chemistry between them and bring a top rate performance to tonightís stage.
Finally tonight’s headliners Endea arrive on stage in their coordinating shirts with ties, there are logos all over the stage just in case you were in any doubt of who you were watching. The band have just released their impressive debut album “Into Oblivion” (Recently reviewed here by Rock Regeneration) and are taking the very bold decision of playing the whole 11 tracks of it all the way through live.
Their sound is bold and experimental pushing genre boundaries to create something very unique. With songs like “Signals” frontman Grimshaw exercises his vocal chords combining different styles to great effect. The two guitars recreate the studio sounds well and bring tunes like the brilliant “August” and the altogether very different “The Well” to life. Endea are diverse and unpredictable, taking you on a journey of exploration through the very boundaries of Rock music. The evening ends with the title track and the band deliver, while the audience sings the chorus at the tops of their voices. I’m reliably informed that this flag-waving band have already started work on that difficult second album, they are going to have to go out of their way to top this one.
Set List
Endea
Intro: Into Oblivion
Grimshaw
Signals
Tormentor
August
Runaway
Breathe
The Well
Mourning
End of the Road
Into Oblivion
Black Tree Vultures
Over Rule Me
Red Head
Down Fall
Paranoid (Black Sabbath Cover)
Doom
Memories
You Really Got Me Going (The Kinks Cover)
Links
https://www.facebook.com/Endeaband
https://www.facebook.com/BlackTreeVultures
http://regionalone.co.uk
Words & Pictures by Dave Chinery (Chinners)
