The Camden Underworld would
be one of my favourite venues if only it wasn't so darn hot and didn't have those crazy three pillars right in the middle of the mosh pit. I mean seriously who
designed this place? Admittedly they are probably the only thing holding the
pub upstairs up, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it.
It was particularly
hot with punters packed to the rafters, literally, to see New Jersey's Stray
From the Path. What to make of them. They clearly have some brilliant songs,
but not necessarily on their new album Only Death is Real, their follow up to
the brilliant Subliminal Criminals. Some of their newer material is quite
chaotic in terms of pacing with fast punk beats mixed in with very slow
breakdowns. In the scrambled mess of the Underworlds acoustics that makes the
new material a bit difficult to follow and certainly those in the pit looked a
bit confused about what to do next at times. That being said their old material
is astonishing. Since they are a very tight unit and play everything with bone crushing perfection their set was full on high energy and very enjoyable. Drew
York is a great front man, getting the crowd involved from the start, which is
fortunate as the rest of the band is a bit static.
The only real let
down was the encore, which instead of playing a barnstormer from their back catalogue, they played a slow one like a spiteful Faith No More used to do. The result was a frenetic night just kind of fizzled out into the autumnal cold.
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