Live Review: Cocks Arquette The Tote

A good match for the night's miserable weather, Urns get heavy early. The frontman may be screaming in English, can't be sure, but he does an accurate job of capturing the first ten or 15 minutes of an Egyptian prison-style interrogation (When you still have energy to scream with outrage, but before they cut out your tongue). Effortlessly crossing into some deep doom breakdowns, even the staunchest arm-crossers in the sparse crowd have to get their 'occult-ritual sway' on. Some heads nod slightly and, being a Melbourne crowd, this probably means Urns are going to be huge.

Judging by aesthetics, one can imagine that the members of Pearls spend most of their time driving around together in a minivan solving mysteries with their canine sidekick. Tonight they get together to play some bittersweet, heroin rock. Lush guitar drones and ethereal, reverb-drenched female vocals float above organs and drums that seem to switch between rock swagger and a drunken stumble, calling to mind Murder City Devils at times. The male singer's loaded croon renders the songs less desperate, but more comfortably depressed.

The Tote seems considerably packed by the time Zond take the stage. As always, they deliver an intense semi-instrumental set, full of tremolo picking and a non-stop drum clinic. Hypnotic, fuzzy and often triumphantly confident in their mastery of noise, Zond make everyone in the crowd a little more cultured.

Whilst watching Cocks Arquette launch their album, the words 'avant-garde' keeps entering my thoughts. So there. It's said. Within the genre-hopping set we witness some kosmische intros, usually followed by bursts of post-hardcore and a whole lot of meditative swirling and screeching oscillations. Digital excretions, mostly emanating out of the pile of wires, blinking LEDs and DI boxes that sit on a desk in front of the bandleader, aside from attracting comparisons to Mike Patton, mostly serve to make audience members feel nauseousness and vertigo, the masochistic kind that you experience inhaling whippets or watching beheading videos. The headliner's set ends the way every good four-band bill should end: with a five-guitar, double-drum kit, stoner-doom epic that may have some of the crowd experiencing either enlightenment or epilepsy.

Hats off to the person responsible for booking this show: four great bands with completely different styles, yet they somehow perfectly match. An effective means of splicing and combining a few of Melbourne's infinitely disparate scenes.