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REPUBLIK – AUGUST 11, 2013
It’s impossible not to love Sunday night rock shows, if only for the sense of flipping the bird at Monday as soon as you enter the venue. Speaking of flipping, those that had the wherewithal to arrive early to catch Austin buzz-band American Sharks did just that. A tight power trio arranged horizontally onstage, American Sharks combined of equal parts punk, rock and metal and opened the show with equal parts raging rock tunes and humour. They even had the crowd lead “Happy Birthday” for one of the members. If you have ever wanted The Melvins to have more songs you could dance to, American Sharks are your band. Sadly, they were without a record (to be released in September), so newly-minted fans had to make do with a T-shirt.
Next up was San Francisco’s Castle, who polarized the audience. With elements of ‘90s female-fronted heavy acts sometimes apparent (the best comparison being, “this sounds like a bad L7”), the band had parts of songs I liked but never won me over for more than 30 seconds at a time. After the lukewarm reception to the centre slot, the crowd began to slowly fill the venue in time for the anticipated headliner.
Barreling out of the gate with their trademark multi-guitar attack, The Sword quickly proved why every denim vest and hair farmer in town had made this their evening. The Sword utilized all seven of their guitars with aplomb. Heads were banged, beers were raised, fists were pumped and probably a couple of eardrums were bruised using a winning mixture of songs, including many choice cuts from Apocryphon. While, as the headlining act, The Sword’s set may have been much longer than either opening band, it passed seemingly quickly. When their showcase finally ended post-encore, this forced a mental review to realize that, yes, you had heard all the songs you wanted to hear, and yes, you hadn’t had that much fun on a Sunday in a while.
By Spencer Brown
Photos: Paige Woodbury
