FAITH NO MORE, BABES IN TOYLAND, KYUSS
The Unicorn, Houston
Friday, January 29
Chris Smith
KYUSS ARE one of the few bands who cannot be heard for long enough. Put a pig on the spit and let them play for 12 hours or so. The perfect setting... but this one will do. Green Machine has got to be the song of the decade - for this month.
Sandwiched between Kyuss and FNM, Babes In Toyland are about as interesting as a handful of top-soil. Kat Bjelland wails like a B-movie harpy, but this movie's slipped to a D-rating. Do something else or leave please. Climb into your radiation-proof helmet and strap yourself into that fishy-looking winged thing - it's time to go along for the ride on the cruise missile that is Faith No More. Countdown commences as the sound of the Erasure intro-tape penetrates. 'Falling To Pieces' exposes one of the keys of the triggering mechanism; never let the angst stop the entertain mentor vice versa.
Screaming across the 'Land Of Sunshine’ at four inches above sea-level we suddenly take a nose-dive into the calm green sea ‘RV' drops to the bottom of things before 'Surprise You’re Dead' puts us into deep ocean. The combination of this level of course change and the five disparate gyroscopes guiding things - Roddy rocking, Puffy pounding, Billy bouncing and Martin... erm Martinising, while Patton generally f**ks off - would sink most lesser bands but here it simply heightens the tension of the flight.
We pass by the quintessential FNM number ‘Be Aggressive' at the top of our trajectory, before crashing through 'We Care A Lot, 'Warm It Up’ and 'Easy'. The valley of lost cover-songs follows, before we come to a nice plateau with 'Small Victory", and... stop.
No explosion despite all the fuss but there is no other band that can cover as much ground without ever losing their way.
