{"id":29336,"date":"2013-05-01T12:51:54","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T12:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alreadyheard.com\/staging\/live-review-minus-the-bear-axes-new-slang\/"},"modified":"2013-05-01T12:51:54","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T12:51:54","slug":"live-review-minus-the-bear-axes-new-slang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alreadyheard.com\/staging\/live-review-minus-the-bear-axes-new-slang\/","title":{"rendered":"Live Review: Minus The Bear &amp; Axes &#8211; New Slang @ McClusky\u2019s, Kingston-Upon-Thames &#8211; 25\/04\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/alreadyheard.com\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/minusthebear.jpg\" title=\"\">Quite astonishingly, after a 10-year+ career and several visits to our shores, tonight marks the first ever time <strong>Minus The Bear<\/strong> play a show in Kingston-Upon-Thames, making a pit-stop at Banquet Records&rsquo; indie clubnight New Slang on their UK tour celebrating the recent release of their fifth full-length, <em>&lsquo;Infinity Overhead.&rsquo;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Before their headline slot, London-based <strong>Axes<\/strong> warm us up with their obfuscating and complex brand of math rock. Just like <strong>MTB<\/strong>, <strong>Axes<\/strong> are a recent signing to the prestigious Big Scary Monsters label, and their sound fits somewhere between labelmates, the widescreen vision of Talons meeting the stop-start dynamics and fretboard dexterousness of Adebisi Shank. <strong>Axes<\/strong> boast a mighty USP setting them apart from their peers, in the phenomenal talents of bassist Stacey. Her four-string thrumming, in the style of Rush&rsquo;s Geddy Lee, forms a strong rhythmic foundation for the two guitarists&rsquo; technical talent to stand upon, and the vocal-less outfit keep attention rapt for the entirety of their set, as they showcase tracks from their recent self-titled full-length. (4\/5)<!-- more --><\/p>\n<p><strong>Minus The Bear<\/strong> arrive on stage to be greeted by a packed-out venue, resonant with cheers, whoops and hollers, and do not waste a moment before ripping into <em>&#8216;Infinity Overhead&rsquo;<\/em> opening number <em>&#8216;Steel and Blood.&rsquo;<\/em> The Seattleites set gives Kingston what it&rsquo;s been missing all these years, with their grooves causing bodies to start moving on the dancefloor, and their pedalboard theatrics getting guitar nerds a little hot under the collar. The setlist concentrates heftily on the latter part of their career, though surprisingly the largest source of input is from 2007&rsquo;s <em>&#8216;Planet Of Ice&rsquo;<\/em> than either of their more recent records, and d\u00e9but record <em>&#8216;Highly Refined Pirates&rsquo;<\/em> barely getting a look in at all.<\/p>\n<p>This is the second date of their UK jaunt following a European leg, and their set has a real mid-tour feel to it &#8211; they experiment with songs they clearly haven&rsquo;t played as much on this tour, and the effect is a little disjointed. The band bring it home with a strong ending of<em> &#8216;Menos El Oso&rsquo;<\/em>&rsquo;s key track <em>&#8216;Pachuca Sunrise&rsquo;<\/em> and an encore of <em>&#8216;Planet Of Ice&rsquo;<\/em>s <em>&#8216;Knights.&rsquo;<\/em> but after the band have finished, you can&rsquo;t help but feel it could&rsquo;ve been a little better than it was. The band are on great form tonight, but it feels as if something is being held back &#8211; just what that is, the crowd at their sold-out show at the Highbury Garage might just find out. (3.25\/5)<\/p>\n<p>3.5\/5<\/p>\n<p>Words by Ollie Connors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Quite astonishingly, after a 10-year+ career and several visits to our shores, tonight marks the first ever time Minus The Bear play a show in Kingston-Upon-Thames, making a pit-stop at Banquet Records&rsquo; indie clubnight New Slang on their UK tour celebrating the recent release of their fifth full-length, &lsquo;Infinity Overhead.&rsquo; Before their headline slot, London-based [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8181],"tags":[3040,3016,136,5881,1093,12742],"class_list":["post-29336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post","tag-axes","tag-banquet-records","tag-big-scary-monsters-records","tag-live-reviews","tag-minus-the-bear","tag-new-slang"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Live Review: Minus The Bear &amp; 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