Live Review: The Black Angels, The Laurels

The Palace sees itself overrun with beards and denim jackets for the Melbourne leg of The Black Angels' Australian Tour. With the amount of blatant flouting of the 'no smoking indoors' law, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you'd walked into a record attempt for the world's largest compression sesh.

Sydney-raised four-piece The Laurels bring their well-known mind-meshing and dreamy sound to the stage. Their influences My Bloody Valentine and The Brian Jonestown Massacre shine through in each of their songs, with long driving rhythms and awesome reverberating riffs. The subdued crowd passively absorbs their sound, preparing their drinks and shuffle moves for the headline act.

The dance floor is difficult to manage. At the back is a near impenetrable wall of unmoving, silent punters who smoosh late-arriving individuals between themselves and the bar. For those smart few who pluck up the courage to prod and push their way through, they are rewarded with the strangest occurrence, an epic amount of space in the dead centre of the mosh. The space provides all the dancing room that you could ever want – that is, until the bright lights push you back into the shadows.

The Black Angels' show is characterised by non-existent banter and mesmerising live projections. Their set, on the whole, never feels like it is building towards a set point. Rather, every song shares the same driving pulse that makes you shut your eyes and open your ears. It is this pulse that rhythmically pulls and pushes at you as if you are the puppet and they are the overlords subtly controlling your every move.

The projections are amazing and perfectly complement the wall of sound coming from the stage. They feature live footage of the band, every wonderfully bad acid trip pattern under the sun and random retro footage cut up and inserted into the mix. While on most songs lead singer Alex Maas' vocals are so washed-out they are barely distinguishable; Broken Soldier is a rare exception and seems to create a different buzz in the crowd. The poor sound quality doesn't bother the crowd, who simply stare, listen and live the experience.

Black Isn't Black closes the encore, complete with projections of a trampolinist. With the lyrics “Placed on this planet, darkness at the door” hanging in the air, the audience dopily exits into the clear night air.