TURBOWOLF
The Fleece | Bristol
October 19th
This is a big night for Turbowolf. It’s the final stop on their headlining tour and the band’s biggest hometown show to date. Fittingly, tickets have sold out on the door shortly before showtime …
Tonight also concludes a significant twelve-month chapter for the quartet. A well-received debut album as well as an EP of psychedelic covers and characteristically weird promo videos that consequently won them airplay, column inches and high-profile support slots. This coupling of label-backed releases with a hearty touring ethic has earned Turbowolf a solid European fan base and trumped the buzz that had surrounded them for some time. Ultimately, they’ve managed to emerge fully from local status towards the early stages of international prominence; a tier that many bands fail to reach.
A big, looming, glow-in-the-dark Tutankhamun head is revealed to cheers and yelps as the band arrives onstage. They take a moment to soak up the impressive welcome before launching into the B-movie spookiness of the introductory track from their self-titled LP. From the off the audience is eating from their hands, as the young, old, cool and uncool bash shoulders and scream along.
Momentum is maintained with the pre-emptive strike of a trio of now old favourites; Ancient Snake, Seven Severed Heads and The Big Cut. Each are an up-tempo example of the Turbowolf formula, made up of rasping vocals, memorable choruses, vast riffs, tasteful touches of synth and tabs of psychedelia bound together around a classic rock song structure. They display moments of flamboyance and shtick, counterbalancing them with a genuine bite and snarl that pukes their collective sum of day-glo influences back out as a unit that’s as slick as it is unpredictable.
A curveball comes in the form of a cover of Captain Caveman by mentalists Lightning Bolt. This in itself is no mean feat, but managing to digest and regurgitate it almost into a Turbowolf song is a whole different story. A new song, currently titled 12 Houses sits comfortably between Rose For The Crows and Read + Write, and offers a small glimpse of what’s to come. A cover of Jefferson Airplane’s Somebody To Love further acts to exemplify their musical dexterity and knack for looting other genres and making them their own. The diversity and communal enthusiasm throughout the packed audience also serves as testament.
Following a satirical false encore, the band finish with recent single, Let’s Die. It’s a fittingly furious finale that allows the audience to lose it one last time before the band prepare to disappear for a while, planning to write new material and surely set their sights across the Atlantic. In a valiant attempt to squeeze every last drop of fun from the show, a chunk of the audience storm the stage as the set reaches its climax and help crown the evening as a heroic homecoming. For a city not exactly renowned for producing great rock bands, Bristol might well have a bit of a game changer on its hands.
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Words and Photo: Ian Ochiltree
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