Live Review: Mt Mountain, Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving, Skullcave, Erasers

Saturday's show at the Rosemount was a bittersweet affair; Mt Mountain finally dropped their debut LP, yet it was the final show for Andy McDonald of Perth stalwarts Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving. It was this combination that led to a near sell-out and a packed front room early on in the night.

The first act of the night was a band that wears their influences proudly on their sleeve. Erasers are a two-piece cold wave/post-punk act that mixes hypnotic analog synth lines with cold monotone vocals. It's Philip Glass meets John Foxx. Their whole set was meditatively slow, but this allowed for you to close your eyes and have the sounds wash over you. Fans of Light Asylum or Anne Clark miss these guys at your peril.

Skullcave offered a show that hinted at a change in direction for the three-piece sludge act. Three songs into their set they claimed, "This is gonna be the last song for the night, it's a new one," and proceeded to drop a nearly 20-minute epic. Very Boris-esque, it crept along with a great vision of light and shade. It was the sound of a giant beast wheezing while pulling itself along. Often it would pause while the tension grew before collapsing into a heavy cacophony of sound. If this is the new Skullcave sound, it's going to be huge.

Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving are a band that don't do things in half measures. The small Rosemount stage was littered with gear barely leaving enough room for the guys themselves. Always an impressive act, but sometimes their sound can get a little too proggy, with meandering keyboard arpeggios. None of that this evening, instead we were treated to a tight wall of sound. It was a set McDonald could feel proud of as he walked off that stage.

As Mt Mountain took to the stage, it was lit by a hallucinogenic black and white visual of lava lamps and noir films. The set hit every track from the new album in all its deafening glory. Mixing psych with deep heavy post-rock, the Rosemount stack was pushed to tinnitus-inducing limits. We are sure many will be feeling the ringing in the ears for days to come. These songs very much live up to the album's title, Cosmos Terros. The sound is full of threatened violence and aggression.