Exit International
Monarch, London
16/02/2010
Exit International
Monarch, London
16/02/2010
Exit International’s Welsh roots don’t exactly exude exotica, and the noises they’re making aren’t ones you could ever describe as fashionable. But what noises! Hell, the main reason they’re always going to struggle being associated with any particular scene is because they’re just so irreproachably idiosyncratic; ruthlessly and righteously serving up the kind of difficult-to-do racket that’s almost never experienced outside of Mike Patton’s copious flights of fancy, only without the aid of any guitars.
Bass, though, they have by the bucketload, with erstwhile Martini Henry Rifles-man Fudge constantly being juddered across the stage by his own stereo-shattering eruptions and frontman Scott, likewise a man with noughties form thanks to his time in Midasuno, conjuring up sinister rumbles that provide a thoroughly malevolent bolstering to vocals that lurch unerringly from Perry Farrell-style vicious chirrups to the lugubrious menace of Guy Eighties Matchbox. All this while drummer Adam flails unfailingly as he delivers volley upon volley of Steve-Albini-under-the-influence-of-an-especially-scarlet-red-mist-style wallop with such surgical certainty that it almost morphs into ruinous rifferama in its own right.
Needless to say, of course, bona fide tunes are a little bit thin on the ground, although, rather like, say, Future Of The Left, it becomes clear that they’re keeping their melodic compromises to more of a minimum than might be immediately apparent on the surface – ‘Chainsaw Song’, for instance, might be something of a beating, but at least they’ve located it in the corner of a disco, and ‘Sex With Strangers’, while grubbily abrupt, has a certain holleralong charm. Plus, in a moment of surprise sweetness, they even express astonishment that they’re already finding themselves headlining. Given the response they get here, though, that’s something they’d best get used to. And little wonder; Exit International really do make for a dazzling departure from rock orthodoxy.
Iain Moffat
