Turnover – Gig Review & Photo Gallery March 5th @ The Woolly Mammoth, Brisbane QLD

Posted on March 6, 2018 by KaydanHowison

Turnover
The Woolly Mammoth, Brisbane QLD
March 5th, 2018
Support: Bloom Parade, Endless and Turnstile

As I enter the venue, I admire the array of people on display here. Every shade of the spectrum, coalesced into this one room. Hardcore, punk rock, shoegaze and mullets, mixed with the sweat and cheap perfume of a Monday night out. It’s equal parts nauseating and intoxicating. The smell of weed pushed around the venue, by the giant metal fans above us only solidifies this.

A blissful ode to just how much no one gives a fuck.

Bloom Parade are first.
Lead singer whoever, is the definition of not giving a fuck.

Warbling their way through the first song. Feedback incessantly looping through the house speakers. The band represents themselves with the same love and care, as your roommate who lives off Homebrand pizza and beer. This level of inexperience is only further honed in on, by their general lack of atmosphere and uninspired stage banter. The icing on the cake is when one of the members explains how “this is their second show ever”. Now envision the scene from Mean Girls where Damien declares “she doesn’t even go here!” and you get the picture.

Maybe someday. But not today Satan.

Endless are next.

Their lead singer bounces on stage spouting piss and vinegar in equal measure. Their muscular hardcore serves the most basic function of warming a ravenous crowd. The only real uniformity tonight is sound issues, with vocals and guitar parts dropping in and out of existence. The band do their best to circumvent these issues, but like dropping three Panadol for your back pain, it doesn’t really do anything for anyone. It’s all just wasted calories and low gains.

Turnstile are none of these things.

Imagine a Redbull, now imagine three more of them; combined together to produce a freak energy super juice. The level of energy generated on stage tonight could power a country for the next decade. That’s how energetic this set is. Brendan Yates and Franz Lyons are all fire and fury, barely human beams of light, pushing themselves, beyond the normal limits of the human anatomy.

Crowds of people join them on stage, throwing themselves off and coming back again – like deep sea divers, wading into a human pool of flesh, sweat, and neon hair dye. There’s this sense, you’re not just witnessing a good show, you’re witnessing the birth of something. Time & Space (their new album) only enhances the already innate qualities of their exhausting and beautiful wrecking ball. Sound issues are still here, but in their hands, this band makes it sound like fucking art.

Sleeping on this band will be the biggest regret in your life.

Turnover by comparison are more like a palate cleanser.

Heavily focused on new album Good Nature. Austin Getz’s soaring dream pop vocals, are crushed under the weight of sound issues. The opening song, ‘Super Natural’ comes across less like a day trip, with the hood down in California, and more like a night time trip to the convenience store. So it’s just not fun. It’s obvious, the new album cannot compete with Peripheral Vision, the crowd greeting the likes of ‘Cutting My Fingers Off’ as old friends. Whilst the new material is met with a general lack of enthusiasm from the crowd, not in the least helped by the bands’ insistence to focus on it so heavily and not intersperse the older material among it.

The best parts of the set, are when the older songs are played or when band reinterprets small aspects of the newer material. Guitar melodies not as noticeable in the recording, but brought out in the open in the live setting or when Getz is “feelin’ it” (whatever it is) stand out in what is a particularly average performance from a great band.

The band rally by the end with just enough gas left in the tank to roll down the highway. The engine might be coughing, screaming and fixed together with duct tape, but we all still had a good fucking time. Nobody is going to leave this show disappointed.

Well, aside from the guy who stole the microphone.

Review by Kaydan Howison

Photo Gallery by Mitch Chamberlain. Please credit Wall of Sound and Mitch Chamberlain if you repost. Instagram: @MJChamberlain

Turnstile