Kylesa - Whammy - live review

Kylesa - Whammy

Kylesa at The Wine Cellar and Whammy Bar, Auckland
February 23 2011

Reviewed by: David Borgioli-Jones

Yeah, so the Melvins, Kylesa and High On Fire gig started late but it was all good! It gave me time to sample some unique European beers at the bar before discovering an alternative booze outlet dubbed "the brown oasis" - essentially a hole in the wall with a guy selling cans of Double Brown for $5. Ahh Whammy Bar, it's a great venue and just the sort of place you'd expect bands to play in a post-apocalyptic subterranean city.

But one disadvantage of playing in a post-apocalyptic subterranean city is that you're bound to run into the odd power outage. Unfortunately for Kylesa that's what seemed to plague their guitar department in what was otherwise a great set. Although the guitars dropped out during the first song, someone in the crowd chimed in with a perfectly timed "It's like Monster Magnet maaaaan, it's a Power Trip!" which helped lighten the atmosphere. The band was able to bridge what could've been an arkward silence with some creative on-the-spot drumming overlaid with keyboards.

Kylesa's set featured highlights spanning the band's 10 years of existence with tracks like 'Dont Look Back', 'Unknown Awareness' and 'Scapegoat' being a few of the ones which really got the crowd going. I've heard some other opinions that Kylesa's performance was a bit flat but you know, considering they were caught up in the mayhem of the Christchurch earthquake, playing in a totally different time zone in conditions which felt like about 45 degrees celcius AND had malfunctioning equipment, I think they did a pretty good job!

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