Devastations (6/02/2009)

-By Pat

Awesome night! We managed to see the Berlin based Devastations last night in their only Australian gig. This three piece formed in Melbourne originally, then migrated to Germany to make a name for themselves in Europe. This was a remarkable night, I'd say at this stage the best show all year.

East Brunswick Club
This was a great venue: average bar prices, good tap beer variety, nice beer garden, excellent sound. Fantastic sound actually, very deep chest-resonating bass and bass drum. In the band room, sound good be heard perfectly (and very loudly!) anywhere in the room. Excellent quality system and great mixing was a bit of a holiday from usual venues, this one really felt like some engineering had gone into it's design.

St Helens
Five piece Melbourne band with a singer that looked a hellofalot like Mick Jagger. They had a great sound and I'm going to keep a look out for any CDs of these guys as they left me wanting more. A bit of psychedelic rock is always appreciated in some way by the two of us (and often loathed when a band is in over their heads) and these guys won our vote, look out for them.

Devastations
So good, so polished and such a privilege to be present at such a one off gig while the guys are in Melbourne. These guys are a bit bigger in Europe playing regularly with the likes of Blonde Redhead and were also at the last All Tomorrows Parties festival in London.
This gig however was the first time I'd seen them and I was really looking forward to it - which in my personal experience tends to be a way to wreck a good gig. However they still exceeded my expectations and were awesome. They played a decent selection of their music from their 3 albums along with a new song. A song from their latest album: Rosa - actually started twice; a d!ckhead jumped on stage (later recognised by Jim as an Inpress Journalist he met once) ran around for a bit and then jumped off but managed to take some of the guitarists equipment with him resulting in a disconnected guitar right before the solo that almost ruined the final song! Luckily the guitarist was still in a great mood and they started the song again, but they all played it a bit differently to the first time and although d!ckheads aren't usually appreciated, I think he enabled us to witness a great live moment. I thank you d!ckhead from inpress!
Once that finished the band came back to the stage to perform a 3 song encore, which was very generous. I know we witnessed a one off and extra special gig that will take a truly mind boggling event to remove Devastations from my top live bands.