Saturday, October 12, 2019

Murder Capital - Castle & Falcon Oct 12, '19

One of the hottest tickets going was this intimate venue gig nearing the end of the Murder Capital's breakout tour. Managing to snag a pair at the nth hour excitement was high in the room, and for me a chance to catch up on a clash from the End of the Road Festival at the tail end of the summer.

The openers, Happy Couple, did no favours though. While the guitarist and drummer were skilled, just having a female singer in a rock band is not enough to make you interesting. Her monotonous singing, mostly washed out anyhow, and lack of stage presence made us all anxious for it to end and get to the goods.

Murder Cap eventually came out of the dark slowly (very slowly) to rapturous applause from the surprisingly mature audience. They were very methodical in the approach to the set, taking a tact of extremely slow everything to begin with - from the one by one entrance to the music. It was a little anti-climactic in my opinion as everyone who wanted to go off was stuck plodding along. Dressed to impress the boys showed class and poise, giving much love first to each other and then to the crowd. Finally in the third song they reached a tempo that could fire up the crowd and a small mosh got going. Overall they sounded quite good, as everyone says they are set for the big time and you can both see and hear it. (Immediately following this gig they announced a new tour playing the much bigger Institute in their return in the new year.) With only 43 minutes of recorded music in their debut album they played every song and managed to draw it out to a 50 minute set which seemed acutely short after all the build up. I hoped there might be an encore - throw in a cover or a new track - but it wasn't meant to be and we filtered out. Overall it was enjoyable and the guys are worthy of the praise but I'd still like to see the next step bring them to the lofty levels of expectations that they may already be falling under.

Slowdance I

Slowdance II

On Twisted Ground

Love, Love, Love

For Everything

Green & Blue

Don’t Cling to Life

More Is Less

Feeling Fades