NICALS, BODMIN (3RD AUGUST)

ICENI ICEMI

(Reviewed by David Woodhead)

Tonight, auspicious beginnings occur in inhospitable surroundings: the dirty back room of a pub in Next-to-Nowhere, Never. At the foot of a bill populated by cartoon punks and organised for charity, Iceni Icemi tear into the nothingness of their own Year Zero with decidedly non-philanthropic violence; they give little to the predominantly nonplussed crowd other than repeated rusty stabbings from their ramshackle sound. Serrated guitars and blood-boiling screams penetrate the room's dense atmosphere, administered with unconscionable fervour. The singer’s swagger is fiendishly lascivious, as though he is sexually preying on his own mic; the bassist holds a steady back line, over which the guitarist churns a feast of grotesquery; the drummer, meanwhile, sacrifices his kit to history. Four songs and they’re out; they fuck and leave the audience with a disdain that borders on amorality. Sheer beauty has never been so joyously ugly.

(Photo by David Woodhead)