[Gig Review] ALPHA WOLF (AUS) /MALEVOLENCE (UK), The Wool Exchange (Geelong, AU) 29.05.2025.
EVENT: 'Terrible Days’ Down-Under Tour, 29th May 2025
LINEUP: Alpha Wolf (Melbourne, AU - Headliner) with Supports Malevolence (UK), Zuko and Melting
VENUE: The Wool Exchange, Geelong (AU)
ORGANISER: Destroyalllines
WRITER: Brady Irwin
REALLY POOR-QUALITY BUT HE TRIED-HIS-BEST WITH A SMARTPHONE IN THE ABSENCE OF A DSL-R
‘PHOTOGRAPHY’**: Also Brady Irwin
**(Side note on that last part - I’d like to review more gigs in the region. I’m actively after any locals who are interested in providing photography coverage in the event our Melbournite crew can’t make it. If you’re interested, message our socials/send me an email, please! I actively want to help support and promote local talent.)
EDIT: Like every app these days, Youtube is giving me nothing but grief. I promise this isn’t some snide pivot to funnel followers to our channel, but mayhaps if you’d like additional footage to that included below, as it makes it onto ISC YT via workarounds.
Also - if you have any prize links, photos etc from the night and want it added, let me know! Can be added confidentially or with username/profile etc credited here.
Socialise gig reviews! Take that far-right neocons!
PREAMBLE: A CONVERSATION WITH YOU, GEELONG.
Ah, Geelong.
Yes, come in, sit down.
* pulls chair over towards Geelong, reverses chair, clasps hands, general oh-buddy-we-need-to-talk gestures *
So, Geelong.
Oft-memed large regional centre also overshadowed by Melbourne. A place everyone in Melbourne believes is as it was in 1995, it seems. (Ironically, a city now absolutely infested with us ex-Melburnian lockdown not-enjoyers). It’s okay, I live near you, have done a few years now - most of that ‘burrhurr it’s all smokestacks and dudes with mullets knifing each other mid-burnout’ is poppycock, and copium deployed to help urbanites resolve the cognitive dissonance associated with spending 80% of one’s disposable income on 2 metres squared in I don’t know, Fitzroy or something. (For the record - love Melbourne, hate the artificially skyrocketing housing crisis).
This isn’t an easy conversation to have, Geelong. But, given the gig I just witnessed within your city-limits at The Wool Exchange, it at least has a positive ending. i.e. the entire review, after our little chat.
But like… here’s the thing, right?
I’ve lived down here in an undisclosed-to-the-public-internet location on the Bellarine Peninsula since late 2022. right? Enjoying my return to my truest chimeric form: A weird mix of geek, surfer-bro, tabletop-player, metalhead and other things that culture-clash a bit. Especially the surfing part; it’s often very funny confirming to either metalheads or surfers you enjoy the other thing unironically.
And you remember all those gigs we’ve enjoyed together? Medusa Bar, Barwon Club? You’re nodding? Dude, right? Oi, dude - how sick was Drencher, and Dozer, and-and Greenleaf, and- oh, sorry. Talking to an audience, not just my mates in the Bendi beer-garden. Said mates, by the way, have been here and confirm overall it’s not Newcastle-meets-Birmingham-in-Hell.
Multiple times I’ve seen punk, metal, hardcore, death metal, doom, and other heavy stuff here. Stuff that gets you moving, forces it, wills it, commands it unseen. AND YET, GEELONG. Apart from the to-be-expected, on-brand insanity that was a Pennywise gig in Torquay (it’s punk - sorry metalheads and hardcore-kids; punks will always have you beat as the unspoken mosh-lord genre) I’ve found myself at a few gigs and venues just actively trying my best. To get the crowd moving a bit, bang my own head, move around, incite at least a horns or a FARK-YEAH. (I’ve probably been annoying to a few locals reading this, even).
But there’s always this air of… cautious reservation?
I can’t put my finger on the correct term, but I’m very, very sure regular gig-goers to Geelong + Melbourne can attest to this, right?
And, Geelong…all this is coming from an overweight, cardio-hating (except surfing, moshing, ??maybe hiking??), depressed/ergo-perpetually fatigued, vaping-too-much (at all is too much), laughably-unfit man. One who just clocked his 36th year ‘round the Sun. Not senile, but basically an Elder Lich in the eyes of the scene’s newer entrants.
If I’m saying ‘pick up the goddamn pace’, me - there’s a problem**, right there.
A problem that was suddenly, fantastically, violently (in a fun way, that only heavy-music-enjoyers understand is actually non-violent), charismatically and hugely resolved. In one gig. Tonight’s gig.
This is a review for the international stage, but it’s also one for you locals. Locals often get a gig-gallery afterthought on big tours, that’s not me. In fact, this one’s that in reverse!
Sleepy Hollow, right?
I was told, as a not-Victorian-born-person and mostly by defensive Melburnites, that that’s the whole stereotype of the place, right? That’s like your whole meme. Oh yeah; that and like, blah-blah, Birmingham/Newcastle-adjacent ‘neeer it’s all factories and cars and working-class bogans’ shtick.
Well, Geelong.
After tonight? My riposte to that is:
“Sleepy Hollow? [ sarcastic snort ] Yeah, Sleepy Hollow my barnacle-encrusted, sandy, fish-and-chip-shop-enjoying, Only Guy In Grindcore Shirts Out Here, Bellarine-Peninsula-Living ass.”
Friends, bored scene-kids waiting for the reel-content (there’s actually some here, children), colleagues of musicological academia - I present to you, my review as thesis, as rejection of the hypothesis that Geelong is, in fact, Sleepy Hollow.
Ramble done. Time for requisite thanks to rad people, then the bands.
Apologies for the long-winded introduction (link to causal factor right here, specifically the chorus), but it had to be said.
COFFS-HARBOUR-NSW-GROWN, GEELONG-VIC-BASED LOCAVORE THANK-YOU’S:
Alpha Wolf, Malevolence, Zuko and Melting tore The Wool Exchange a new one, with a viciousness best quantified as One Peter Dutton Electoral Landslides’ Worth of Band Fury in total energy expenditure.
(for our Malevolence stans over in merry ol’ England, that’s a lot. Please don’t Google Peter Dutton; I want to be reallowed entry to the UK to do ArcTanGent again. That See You Next Tuesday (great band) doesn’t even get a bolded pronoun as per my style formatting).
BIG thanks as per usual to Destroyalllines for conducting such a thorough and stellar/successful tour thus far, of which tonight is another blinding notch on the belt where that’s concerned. If every show’s been half as hectic, that’s a job well done by band and industry alike. They even promoted me to ‘Photographer’ as a nice surprise! See below.
Thanks of course, to the patient and awesome staff at The Wool Exchange Entertainment Complex - I wouldn’t envy working a gig in regional Australia on anyone, specifically not heavy-music-enjoyers. We’re a handful! You were right to be suspicious of some bloke with a smartphone undiscernible from the rest casually hopping into the photographers’ pit. (job me again so I can buy a camera, employers. Cheers!).
Thanks to ‘The One Man Army’ in John Howarth of Nuclear Blast Australia for facilitating me even being there tonight in the first place. I’ll see you in mutual email-hell, hope your inbox is faring better than mine but I doubt it!
Thank YOU, attendees tonight, for reaffirming my faith that perhaps the spirit of mosh is much more alive in Geelong than some (not all) past experience would lead me to believe.
**- inb4 “Gah-Hyuuuuuuck! Ur JuSt GoiN 2 Da WronG ShoWz BuDdY, lol” comments.
My response to which is a simple:
“Hey [casual Australian expletive for emphasis]… that’s nice, Dear. Do me a favour honey - see Mindsnare whenever they ever play their next Geelong gig, kid.
Also, call Barwon Health in advance - you’ll need it. Don’t clog up emergency by waiting too long on it.
Kind Regards,
Brady/Mindsnare.”
VIBE-CHECK + OPENERS, MELTING.
I got one or two shots in before the sheer, absurd discomfort of being ‘a photographer’ with my smartphone set in. Plus, mosh.
Hot flaming Christ with a chili-pepper crammed into his derriere! No chill, no keyboard solos, no interludes. Straight into the madness. That’s hardcore, baby!
Bassist + Seco: “hey little man! You know can just scoot past over to the other sid- no? Okay”
Moments prior - descending the steps of the nice, but ultimately we-have-The-Forum-at-home styled decorum of The Wool Exchange (I was, for a moment, seriously questioning how so many hardcore gigs are booked but no complaints - lovely place, suited the gig really well too), the venue was already at fuller-capacity than perhaps my gig-choices in Geelongian past were ready for, expectations-wise. I’m talking minutes after doors, people.
Admittedly, as a seasoned-mosher I was perhaps a bit distracted at the time, but erm. Yeah. You see a venue with this vibe and a hardcore bands’ booked? Nah, dude. I went to the early Parkway shows back in the day at PCYC, 50 Lions blah blah Byron High School etc.
Not point-scoring; actually showing a fatal lapse in pattern-recognition. A good fatal, by the way.
A heavy-music show booked with a venue who’s landing site looks like this, means chaos. Like and subscribe for more n = 1 overgeneralisations! Baller venue for the gig in the end, by the by.
This is what I love about hardcore/metalcore shows.
Metal-bro gigs? Faggedaboutit (read in your finest Bostonion/New Yorker). You best be wearing half-plate armour and at least 18 in your Armour Class, once the pint-smashing rabble finally turn up past the third band to complain about there being too many bands on the lineup.
Gigs like this? No, they’re here. You’re here. Now. It’s/you’re a scene like hardcore worldwide; drenched in community-ethos, giving everyone a fair shake of the sauce bottle.
Like Kevin Rudd’s famous quote-drop, with a penchant for Mandarin, Geelong’s non-CCP collectivism showed. Early, too.
Again. Room heading in the direction of soon to be packed… for the first band.
At 7pm.
On a weeknight.
Dude. Nice.
Nice one, Geelong. Props.
(Barwon Club gig bar-flies, take note. Yes, they’re cheap pints out front, but death is final, gigs are eternal and you never know).
The second thing I love about ‘core shows, is exactly what most chin-stroking, aloof, high-society, fantasy-bourgeoise-elf folk known as capital-M Metalheads (™, not to be confused with most cool-dude ‘metalheads’ in lower-case) snub their noses up at with visible I-just-spoke-to-the-proleteriat disgust. It’s the fact that you can just chill the heck out as both punters and bands on rocking out. Not girth-and-length-measuring about notes per minute, diminished chords, or whatever line you’re plying on the clearly-dissociated-with-boredom girl in the Behemoth tank-top. Ah, I felt relieved just typing that, as much as I love my metal-commune.
Pictured: a capital-M metalhead (even metalheads lower-case know the type). Source: Reddit user /u/Hergyl2 on Reddit via this post. Don’t cruise that sub for too long, okay? It’s… it’s certainly a subreddit that exists!
I think we can all agree that pretty much every hardcore bill is musically pretty narrow.
But that’s the thing. I don’t think a lot of capital-M Metalheads (™) whinging about three thrash bands in a row have as good a grasp on just being able to stow it, practice some simple gratitude (muh masculinity) and just… just rock? Just shut up, stop taling about the gig you’re at mid-set to whinge, and rock? It’s live music, dude.
(The horror…what’s not to love? It’s live music, you’re at a venue, most of the worlds’ populace can barely eat. Goddamn dude. More of you people need to working in the housing/homeless sector. Shoo fly, cry to Mum - I’m headbanging. Piss off, seriously).
No, none of us wandered in expecting Arcturus (cubed x10) outdoing Demilich outdoing Brain Drill. We were offered four solid units of core. Different, but invariably, core. Meat and taters. Not every meal has to be degustation I have to hear about at the next five gi- meals in your drunk shout-talk distance.
And in the context of a hardcore show, and good hXc bands, that’s not only fine - it’s phenomenal.
Exemplary of this are young firestarts Melting, a band that lived up to their namesake.
[Zoomers collapsing with the stimulation-deprived relief that a band’s set is finally discussed]
I knew I liked these guys from the second, the Planck-second the first gut-wrenching, pained, reddened-faced effort our initial frontman kicked off the night’s proceedings with.
Bro is seconds into this shindig, and he’s expressing the same pain writ on my face at any function where it’s not a gig and I thus have to face hours of remembering to be ‘interested’ in things like mortgage rates, insurance policies, MAFS and whatever it is you neurotypicals like.
That’s a deep pain. It takes effort and emotional rawness for such a face to be produced anywhere in a set, least of all the first note. Also, chutzpah. It’s easy to rest on the laurels of being the first band if you want to lean into the lower-stakes of that rung, sure. None of that here. Conan himself (also the band, sick band) wrenched my mans’ shoulder and compelled him to rock it on threat of excruciating, slow death. Yeah, I’d scream like that too, brother. Conan was busy with said hand, as the whole band were in an immediate flywheel of motion.
Cutting through the double-hazes of 1. mental-illness-neurospicy-permabrainfog (clinical term, trust me I’m a social worker by trade/don’t look it up ) and 2. that being-not-home-at-7pm-ever-at-36-years-old (an excuse peddled by people who aren’t clinically insane /with decent enough routines) like a scythe, my nervous system had nary a seconds’ relief. Nary one, folks, before crushing, jagged, caustic, rust-choked sheets of dank, corrosive, late-90’s-brawlin’-time-metallic-hardcore-leaning riffage slits my skull open, eager to stuff feelgood neurotransmitters into that empty container.
Wow. I’m not even a friggin’ minute into this, and already the first bands’ riffs and T O N E are clenching every starved dopaminergic receptor with a browny-maroon, tetanus-filled fist. Conan-style. The tone from every band tonight… god-damn. Props to the sound-staff on this front too! Mad respect.
Tone dialled in on every band for that weirdly-requisite-in-the-scene-in-places chef’s-kiss clean backing tracks/mix levels, but also for a thick cloud of angry sonic hornets erupting from speakers. Bless those beautiful hornets. I/we are just bathing in a pool of distortion-heaven. UGH. Yeah.
Again, a swerve past my preconceptions, those of course based on self-facing Geelongophobia tropes as discussed prior. I’ve been washed clean of all the intellectual garbage millenial life brings, as these power-chords and tremolo runs bash into my silly cranium.
OH MY GOD, YES.
This is already sick. Mad. Rad. I’m down, keen, chuffed, hyped and stoked. My energy levels rise, and the ADHD-demon finally wrestles free, emancipated from its’ panopticon of inertia typically caged by ‘schmental-schmillness’ stuff. And that little guy has been egged on straight away. You can almost feel the global increase in lactic acid of the musculature across the room. Palpable. Zesty. It’s the kind of communal-vibrations feeling you’ll get in two places: 1. a hardcore gig/solid gig of any kind, 2. the arse-end of a tirade from someone who thought 5 milligrams was a guideline, because ‘they’re fungi, it’s natural’.
Well, my John-Butler-listening friend, I think we’re on a more similar buzz than you’d think.
Firing off a brutal concoction that hearkens to nearby local madlads Nicolas Cage Fighter, my heart nevertheless sank for them for a moment. It was The Problem, exactly as whinged above. Just no movement, an unresponsive crowd. Fear struck my heart, in addition to the usual background hum spurred by generalised anxiety disorder and whatnot. Could it be..? Oh, nope, never mind, there goes the pit. Guess I’ll just focus on the b-
Boom. Boom-town, folks. It only takes one, and the dominoes fall.
And so it was, folks. Blasting through latest EP You Exist Because We Allow It (that I’m post-hoc dubbing ‘criminally underrated’ as a new listener) like a man days into starvation at a buffet, the openers were on-like-Donkey-Kong. All the classic tropes that give me a Sith styled grin were present; dump-truck thumps of power chord chug, Goku’s spirit bomb in breakdown form, spindly 90’s alt-rock/metal style arpeggios for flavour. A rhythm section heavier than forty Panzers. Oh, and a healthy lashing of thrash metal and even some frantic tremolo to boot!
We got all the greats from our orator - “We better see you guys fuckin’ move!”, “Hey Geelong? WAKE THE FUCK UP!” (SEE?!) and increased urgency that “we’ve got one minute left - you better fucking GO!".
You know ‘em, you love ‘em, exactly 0% of us were here to be read treatises on philosophy or whatever. Sick, loved it. Again, it’s hardcore, bro. Did you really sign up for PBS News-Hour in banter?
We (everyone) didn’t love the technical issues that thwarted the guitarist in the last minute, but did the band even pause or stop? Nope, they hung a Hail-Mary on screams and the rhythm section, and a very-much-awake crowd responded with the aplomb they deserved.
You guys have a new, instant fan in me. And my companion, a local mosh-enjoyer who has Sammy-From-Musolegion (Hi Sammy! Keep Melbourne scared in the pit, brother) levels of endurance, was abjectly beside himself with a new shirt, a copy of the EP and us entering into mutual “BROOOOO HOWSICKWERETHEY”.
And thus, as someone who really, honestly doesn’t give two-farks about how I’m perceived by strangers (if you think otherwise, you’re new here - the content is unhinged), I nonetheless felt like a complete and utter drongo being ahead of the barrier with a goddamned Samsung phone. Not wanting to leave the rabidly excitable puppy in my gig-companion hanging, I opted for discretion as the better part of valor. Yes, fam, that awkward doucher up the front first band was me, hah.
So far, so good though. Like, dude. Really good.
THE ONLY THING ASIDE FROM THE WITCH IN OZ THAT’S MELTING ROUND HERE? YOUR FACE, VIA THESE LINKS:
2. ZUKO
Zuko, staring at my Gallery app wondering where all their pics went.
Response: #sorrynotsorry, was too busy moshing and getting absolutely bodied like the unfit ADHD vaping-enthusiast I am [don’t vape]
If that seems like a hefty amount of literary pondering for an opening band, well, it shouldn’t be. Shut up, Metal-Archives nerds, words can be said about hardcore, too. Go play in the sand with Beyond Creation, I’ll come hang with you guys later for a lowercase-metalheads hang. No, I’m not interested in Classic WoW.
And thus, I continue with more high-praise. ‘Cause to the delight of all-and-sundry in attendance, we get a second scoop. A St Leonards’ ice-cream in the summer, second-sugary-glop of banger, straight-fire supports.
But first, a legit apology to the band - I probably came off as odd from the crowd cause I was really thinking (translation to autism/ADHD - staring, intensely). I’m not one of those scene-creeper elder millenials (men who, as a pacifist, I’ll still affirm no tears would be shed upon hearing one met both a volume of petrol, and a lit match). I had no idea these guys were from Brisbane, and I swear black-and-blue I’ve seen them/some of their band members before. Seriously. Somewhere? You kids in bands like, late 2017’s or did your tunes rattle my skull so loudly the last two braincells fell out?
Anyway, besides the point - I do that a bit around here. I didn’t have time to figure it out, truth be told. My working-memory buffer was instantly and utterly deleted from existence the second those frankly disgusting waves of fuzz-heavy, distorted bass, crashing china and Drop Z-Squared, Probably tuned guitars graced my earholes.
Not one to be outdone on the vocal front, Zuko’s dual-vocal attack from both vocalist and guitarist was concept-of-proof that 1. Female vocalists can wrench unholy roars from themselves that Manly-Man secretly fear, and 2. Hardcore bands are, as I keep saying, great. The pure, vitriolic rasps, shrieks and throat-shredding gnarls coming out of these two was just chef’s-kiss accompaniment to a dual-guitar attack, and a rhythm-section heavier than the burden of my current Warframe addiction.
“Get the fuck up in this place [motioning to, of course, the beloved circle] - I wanna see some fucking action, some violence in that pit!”
And look, this review isn’t aimed at the general population - we know what ‘violence’ here really means. An unyielding swarm of bodies, flailing arms, the two-stepping I’ve never gotten but appreciate folks are into, and a circle-pit run - at the same time. No organisation, no chaos. No one has the mental capacity to think when they’re enjoying the second helping of damn-near-extreme-metal-heaviness via live metallic hardcore.
And Banana Man? This is your first entry into the review. Seriously, guys, I know it’s probably a local/tour in-joke, but I laughed to myself a lot this evening. Banana Man, standing resolute in every empty circle as the frontmen of four bands waved fingers and issued hardcore-scene fatwas to the scene-caliphate: “I want you to kill that fuckin’ cunt, Banana Man, let’s go”. The guy was copping fatwa’s from the clergy of hardcore-frontman caliphate, and cheering like a cat that got the cream. Oh yeah, he’s loving it.
BONUS GEELONG CONTENT: I am so happy and proud that half the crowd near me erupted in unanimous cheers when the local legend, Benny The Man Himself, couldn’t even be contained thanks to Zuko, throwing his frame into some suave hardcore-dancing moves. I’m not talking two-step, I’m talking that actually real-smooth, whirl through the air like a lotus leaf, whole-body coordinated dance. Not just a headbanger, TIL!
As far as I’m aware, an assassination based on my weird analogy never occurred. Again, cognitive faculties weren’t exactly attending to that; I was too busy getting my rear-end handed to me and returning the favour in kind. I moshed harder to the bands tonight than I have at recent brutal death metal and thrash gigs, and that’s My Whole Thing.
Proclaiming with the love only a son could give, Zuko’s enigmatic hat-sporting frontman declared “This one’s dedicated to my Dad - he’s a cunt, this is called ‘Broken Neck’!”.
You don’t get that emotional honesty onstage from many capital-M Metalhead frontmen. Not often enough, anyway.
Above: Discussing emotions with your average war-metal, bare-chested, barbarian Metal-Men-Man frontman (who we stan and love).
You can’t sideskirt statistical probability and human-nature.
And yea, faithful sermon, the roomful of writhing, cheering, moshing bodies answered the clarion-call for some seriously hearty retorts to less-than-stellar Dadship [assumed based on evidence, lol] for our vocalist, ratcheting the antics up tenfold. The semi-scat/rap-style vocals gave the track a Hacktivist/Speed tinge that just sent me, absolutely sent me. And again - I’m years past listening to much of any of that.
Banana Man in action. Update: Since this review is taking an eon to complete, I’ve since learnt man’s a fixture at scene-gigs. “Am I that removed from the scene now? No, it’s the hardcore-kids who are wrong.”
Ah, to quote It’s Always Sunny once more in a review - you unzipped me. “It’s all coming back, d’you understand?”. I am now physically 18, sleep-deprived (what changed?), undiagnosed-neurodivergent and about to give some sway-moshing bogan at The Sands Tavern in Maroochydore what-for after he sloshed nicotine-infused QLD VB on me (shots fired? Coopers did it better than both anyway, fight me). Oh man, I remember that kid and his manic pit energy. Let’s go.
Sorry Will, that pit is calling.
Hold my sadly-not-a-pint-in-a-glass-but-now-I-get-why beer.
Never mind, we’re back, both in the mosh and pretty much didn’t leave, cept to catch a breath [don’t vape]:
[RANDOM GRATUITOUS SHORT-FORM CONTENT:
*(currently IG-only until my Youtube app plays ball. Blame Meta for the DRM!
Nice one on the walled-garden app ecosystem, Zuckhead!).
Driven by drumming that’d raise eyebrows from your local prog-nerd, coupled with bass so deep-and-fuzzy it’d make SunnO))) break out in a sweat, Zuko overall hung back on the riff variety-show and instead cut to the chase and went for the freaking jugular. That’s fine, I dig. I’m lowercase metalhead mode tonight.
The liberal use of those stank hardcore/post-hardcore dissonant/sharp riffs throughout, though? Oh gods, heaven to my auDHD brain. Like a nice arpeggiated massage. Yummy, yummy, spindly discordant riff-breaks in my tummy. Lots of aural responses of agreement from other sated stomachs all around, too. The whole gig.
So. Zuko.
Brisbane’s too humid, guys. Move down here. Now. You’ll hate Siberian Victorian winter, but I selfishly get to enjoy more Zuko shows that you’ll be doing a lot more in Geelong. Cheers, appreciate the effort in advance. DAL, can you guys offer relocation packages or…?
IS THAT A SCENE-GRENADE-LAUNCHER?
NAH, FAM, IT’S A DAMN BA-ZUKO:
3. MALEVOLENCE
“He can talk! He can talk!”
“I can siiiiii-iiing!”
Check out Old Mate there, just absolutely loving life listening to this style of music while he handles a Pearl Harbour of crowdsurfers. Bruv, you earnt your coin tonight. Hope we didn’t give too much grief, mate.
Speaking of relocation - Malevolence, you clearly loved tonight as much as you’ve been enjoying your otherwise-gruelling run of shows in Australia. Why don’t you just set your stuff up down here with Zuko? I mean come on, those accents. Great anathema to the cat being dragged down a wind-tunnel in G-Major that is the average Aussie accent.
“We. Are. Maleh-volence, and weeeeh-re frum Shehffield!”
I won’t type out the Australian phonetic equivalent, ‘cause I don’t want people at my house thinking I had a stroke mid-sentence.
For real, though. Freakin’ Yorkie and UK accents in general. As far as I’m aware, I’m heterosexual, but for that moment? With that introduction? The Cheshire cat that got the cream in this frontman’s smile, beaming love and pride from the get-go unto the flock? - I don’t think I was. I don’t think anyone in the room was.
Not just Alex, the whole damn band sporting that devilish, I-know-something grin of anticipation. Uh-oh.
Malevolence sporting a collective, warm but cheeky grin. Nah man, hardcore is meant to be like, TUFF, right? Alright, what’s this. I’m a flit-between lower and uppercase metalhead. What gives? Smiles? Hmm. This, I ponder with resultant fear, is possibly driven by:
Thought A:
“Ey Up, ! These gormless neshes have nowt what they’re in fer”
[these foolish attendees of Commonwealth colonial origin are blissfully ignorant of impending pit-doom],
Thought B:
“Aye, job be right, no laikin’ [spelling?]”
[we’ve a performance to uphold but are confident we will deliver it proficiently, no need for laziness] , or
Thought C:
This sketch from Monty Python. ‘LUXURY’.
(Everyone I know from the UK locally will have my Yorkshirianly-insensitive guts for garters on that probably, but it’s okay - Aussies are the bigger meme).
Is bro a proficient martial artist in the left upper limb? ‘Cause he was chopping at that air something fierce.
Alex: “I’m just picturing capital-M Metalheads (TM), bro”.
Whatever was behind that legitimately band-wide smile of chagrin… they knew something we, or at least I, didn’t.
But I’ve seen that grin before. Nah, bro. Neurodivergent lack of radar sometimes aside, us spicies know a vibe-check, actually. The venue atmosphere sharply 180-ed from the banger electronic-heavy playlist of the interim to invisible, unseen, crackling charged energy.
In parallel, my two last remaining neurons fired a melancholic dual process (translation for non-Australian readers):
“Aw narrrr, kaant’s farked ayyyy” [Oh no! I am surely soon to be in mortal peril, I say], and
“Nahhh. oi dude, yeahnahyeahnah but oi, it’ll be hell fkn SICK ayyyy” [But don’t stress, Dear Second Braincell! Rest assured, it will be a riveting performance].
I was very right on both counts.
Speaking of international relations, Malevolence are huge the world over right now, and their next-level metalcore magicka tonight borrowed unashamedly very heavily from an American/NWOAHM artesian basin. That is to say, if you took peak Lamb of God (particularly As The Palaces Burn/Ashes Of The Wake) but, instead of going all hey-look-we’re-In-Flames-too about it, and headed down to basement with fellow brutes Himsa, 100 Demons, Merauder and Throwdown instead, you’re getting closer.
That said, my ‘elder-millenial’ jab at In-Flames-knockoffs from the 2000’s had some ephemeral traces here. Only that, in the hands of surgically-precise guitarists Josh Baines and Konan Hall (you’re SO dead when a heavy band comprises a member named Konan who is physically a unit) and thunder-merchant Wilkie Robinson (bass), you’re not just copping bored, tired, local-opener we-know-lead-guitar schlock - you’re getting a super creative and nimble flourish of sweeping, arcing soloing, leads that Gandalfed themselves in/out of the building, atop a framework of metalcore, hardcore, neo-thrash, Southern-baked blues and more. I’d say ‘Wilkie’s bass sounded buried in the mix’, but that’s just bassist-bias, and these guys start out with tunings and tone that’d get Meshuggah very hot and bothered. Nevertheless, the oft-unsung heroes of the hardcore band, Wilk was just as creative as his six-stringed compatriots.
Speaking of unsung hardcore heroes? The drummers. All of the drummers tonight. Fantastical, frantic, complete beasts that threatened to steal my ‘I’m supposed to be reviewing the whole gig, generally’ attentional focii down to ‘DRUMMER GOOD! DRUMMER SO GOOD!’. Kids, remember it’s these guys driving so, so much of that energy subsumed by you and whirled in circles on venue-surfaces.
Charlie Thorpe just out here, happy as a clam to either ride that sweet, unifying zazen-bell of 4/4 china, or peel off into a seemingly twelve-limbed ambidextrous flay of fills and rolls (and blasts! That’s right, forum-dwelling troglodytes, lots of ‘core bands do blastbeats now! Sorry it’s not such a preciously held relic for you anymore! Grow up, poser!).
I’ll profess that I’m just not as into metalcore as I once was, particularly the more groove-focussed stuff. But, you’ll notice I used the distinction metallic hardcore (I’m being a Typical Metalhead literal-autist here; there’s a difference) for the first two bands. Alex and bandmates ploy a brand of metal/hardcore bonding that is the reason they’re so huge on-disc. Sorry, on-smartphone. Metalcore and metallic hardcore within the one package, finely balanced and tuned, and it goes super, super hard in a live setting. Nice.
It felt like the band categorically, objectively, sonically, weren’t the heaviest of the night. They didn’t need to be; chops, confidence, enthusiasm and a still appreciably-damn-heavy sound were present too. I mean, heck, they had Konan doing soulful croons and Phil-Anselmo-approved drawls. They had power-ballad-in-metalcore-form ‘On Broken Glass’, to which I’ll be safe from handing in my Edgy Brutal Blackened Sludge/Death Metal Man-Card until a black-metal elitist reads that I, and indeed the room, were visibly choked-up for. That’s right, friends-in-1349-shirts-I-won’t-name, I got teary to metalcore nearly. They would’ve too, just wouldn’t admit it.
It wasn’t all safe, though. Not with rippers ranging from ‘If It’s All The Same To You’ (yay! I can sing-along for this one!) from absolute bastardly-good LP Where Only The Truth Is Spoken (an album I’m happy to have myself or a staffer review, if there’s interest - we gots-a-copy) through multiple rip-and-tear barn-burners from 2022 LP Malicious Intent. Things oscillate from not a dry eye in the house, to not a single millilitre of sweat left in any pore - the audience brought it, freaking constantly, to a band as constantly in-motion as they were.
The Malevolence hype-train is real. And I get it via their studio material but now, having seen them live, I fookin’ get it, like. Big-time. These guys have blown up but trust you me - they’re a bee’s proverbial from thermonuclear detonation on the world-stage. Skip these guys on a hardcore megafest bill as a promoter/manager at your own damned peril.
COMPEL THESE GUYS TO NEVER LEAVE THE COUNTRY THIS/NEXT TIME. REVERSE COLONIALISM!:
INTERMISSION - FEATURING 12 SECONDS OF BANANA-MAN. YOU’RE WELCOME.
Damn, kids - you thought you were copping like, a few paragraphs total, huh?
Haha…. nah.
Go read one of Mal or Hamza’s many great reviews if you prefer your writing style succinct and efficient. I don’t do that here. Soz.
If you like it, stick around, links up top-right and down-bottom - and read Dean’s reviews. They’re as long as mine, but way better honestly.
If not, don’t blame you.
‘til then, here’s me capturing a brief glimpse of poor Banana Man. Who are we kidding? Bro was relishing the death-threats (Legally-binding disclaimer: not actual death-threats).
#socialmediamarketing #SEOoptimisation #grindset #minmaxingsocials #shortformcontent
4. ALPHA WOLF
Exhausted, bedraggled, infuriated at wondering where the point in this literary exercise either starts or ends, and promising yourself you’ll swear off a Brady-hardcore-gig-review forever?
S’cool. I get it. You don’t have much longer. And you don’t. because Alpha Wolf.
Wait, what? They’re the headliners, though! Yes, yes dear. I know. But, see, rather than go play-by-play of each track, extracted meticulously from the setlist, I think I want to do these guys justice, review the set as it happened from my perspective, and honestly rationalise the question everyone (myself included, admittedly) asked:
“‘Why didn’t Malevolence headline the tour?!’”
Answering this question relevant to Malevolence:
I can’t? Their business, not mine? Ask ‘em? Integrity? Wanting to do things like an actual hardcore band (extensively tour countries they go to with a focus on the locals, play regional shows with the same motivational force they’d put on at, say, Download etc)?!
It’s a valid question, and having international headliners usurped by a local equivalent is a stab right in the heart of our culture, which is more heavily British in it’s obsession with over-modesty and repression than you’d like to think. Too bad. Let these UK folks take a W for Alpha Wolf. You’re starting to sound like a capital-M Metalhead. Yeah, I said it.
Bands have social media for many reasons, too - believe it or not, it’s not just to share content to c o n s o o m. They also would love to hear from you and field your queries. No, really! Click the damn links above and ask them yourself.
Are we done with the nasally-whined questions? Finished? Good, thanks. Buy tickets and go to shows, don’t just ask questions like you’re feigning involvement with broader scene via talking about what you dont like about shows you saw on Facebook.
Actually Answering The Question Based Off Of This Gig And Alpha Wolf’s Live Cred:
There’s no room for your muh-lineup baby-BS with Alpha Wolf.
I state this confidently after tonight, and as a guy who abjectly is years past being super-deep into bands like this, someone who’s average musical tempo from Spotify has to be 180bpm, gurgling goregrind only tempered by Dragged Into Sunlight or whatever else makes me think I’m so cool and unique:
These guys were brutal. Are brutal.
(extreme metal elitists literally just died at this sentence. ‘No Love Lost’ by Carcass plays gently).
On-disc?
Hmm. For a world-weary, death-metal-shirt-sporting crust-punk grind-head like me... not in the scheme of things on record. Not really. Please refer again to my underscored byline through this review - I listen to a lot of extreme-metal, all the time.
How About Live, Then?
Yeah, nah, you heard right. This set was pure savagery on a level that I unironically hope to see more traditionally-metal bands raise to. AW were gargantuan.
“GEELONG!”
It’s at this point I am, as we say in Australia, cooked. Cooked, mate. Done for. Fate is sealed. There is no internal locus of control when the guitars are just as heavy and grating in that time-tested, ringing-power-chord opening, not with those thudding double-kicks. Not with a scream of that intensity.
“Everybody! Everybody, in the middle, right now. If you see someone fall or get hurt, help them up, but if you see someone standing - change that”, our final orator and glass-shard-throated Lochie Keogh spits whilst sporting that hardcore-band-frontman swagger-walk. A walk that, like everything else with hardcore gigs, just hits different live and in the flesh. Which is why you need to see some remaining shows on the tour, and not just read words and sneer.
Sneering’s for posers, anyway.
[RANDOM GRATUITOUS USE OF SHORT-FORM CONTENT - The 2025 Annual (Can We Make This Gig Annual?) Geelong Alpha-Wolf Crowdsurf Derby Winner!]:
Back to the gig, and we’re barely a few bars of musical output and uh, something is happening. To my brain. In my body.
Whatever genomic traces of the Neanderthal are swarming around my DNA lit up like fireworks the moment they kicked off. And they kicked off h-a-r-d. I was reduced to utter brainstem. Phone in pocket. No more notes. Eyes locked on targets. There’s people. Must collide into people. Go. Run. Now.
“Wh- huh, who’s driving this?!” - Alpha Wolf buddy, Alpha Wolf. They likely multiclassed somewhere at Level 20 or something. I don’t know, man, there’s something about this that’s just built different. Just get in the pit, schmuck.
Pushing my meat-and-skeleton-frame into an absolutely mayhemic pit that honestly should make all of Melbourne hang their heads in sincerely forlorn, repentant and deep shame*, I cast aside the frontal cortex responsible for the droll I write and honestly? Almost concussion-styled blur for a good portion there.
[*No. No! Shoosh. Oiiii.. no. Bro. Mate. SHUT UP, my music-loving gig-friends in Melbourne - unless you snuck into this gig and were there? No. Sit down. Shut up. Love y’all, but for now - shut up. Once I see some consistently Brisbane-level pit-thuggery, shut up and go pretend to read Thoreau to pull someone overheard talking about having a Master’s Degree. Get caveman, idiots.
Now, excuse me, I need to go lie down for unironically backing Queensland for once.]
[RANDOM GRATUITOUS USE OF SHORT-FORM CONTENT - POV (No, Not THAT POV, Don’t Be A Scene-Dicaprio) Gonzo-Pit-Journalism, Featuring Four Pals (And Then Half The Venue) xoxo:
‘Pretty Boy’, ‘Creep', ‘Sucks 2 Suck’ - song titles from a band plumbing a washing-machine of the Most Local Opener Band Of Thugs Who Spend Half The Set Giving Thanks To Their Postcode, mom’s-apple-pie beatdown-hardcore, lashings of brutal deathcore (some absolutely killer tremolo riffage in there! Oh, but my frozen cynical death-metal heart!), djent-style pogo-bounce single-string slamming and even a palatable slice of nu-metal electronica/scat mischief. Yeah, look - Scottie (Simpson, lead), Sabian (Lynch, rhythm) and John Arnold (bass-field, bad joke) are equally more adept and technically proficient than snobby tech-death nerds like me would think in passing, but also clearly did not give a rat’s. Damn the torpedoes, and boy did they have a constant restocking of human torpedoes lunging over the barrier at the frontman’s behest.
Malevolence brought merry-ol’-England smiles to the stage. With equal passion and compassion, albeit filtered through a very different emotional lens, Alpha Wolf as a whole brought their version of the streets to a populace in a region I find down-to-earth, laidback, but also not afraid to call a spade a spade (maybe that’s the negative stereotype origin, you guys upset a Brunswick native on their quaint drive down for the day). This is Geetroit, bro, and Alpha Wolf are a shoe-in on that vibe top to bottom.
I blabbed a fair bit in the outset of this interview and, sure, folks brought it for all and sundry to this show. But the Alpha Wolf pit takes a healthy damnable share of that pie-chart. People were reduced to utter automatons, gleefully bashing into each other in a never-ending cacophony of limbs, people disappearing and hefted up off the floor, circle-pits that reminded me the scene often involves straight-edge (ergo, healthier people than I with more robust cardio), with not-reckless semi-abandon and happy, mirthful but pointed and extreme vitriol.
I spend a lot of time going into, and quickly resurfacing from, pits. I’ve done so for eh, about 20ish years now. Half my life is a blur of some dude’s hair whipping my face, or some variation of that. I’ve recently been in quite a number of them, and honestly? I actually dislike admitting this - Alpha Wolf have a necromantic, mystical capacity to just straight, brute-force command an entire room to their bidding, be it verbally via barked instruction, or sonically through the jumpy, bouncy but crushing riffage. Like, above and beyond quite a few cherished and beloved more traditionally-metal bands I’ve seen lately. That’s an ego-hit, but I/they can take it. Especially if they experienced the ‘Wolf pit (complete with howling!).
Hell, one of my favourite moments of the entire night was when two boofheads’ testosterone glands intermingled and they nearly traded five-knuckle exchanges; before the security got to them, before myself or others could try wresting the two apart, with the calmness of a Hindu cow, Lochie drops the most perfect “nah, none of that - cut that shit”, perfectly placed mere milliseconds before a particularly crushing, brutal breakdown hits.
Heck, on that note, yet another thing capital-M Metalheads will spend inordinate amounts of time whinging about (they’re like the worst Poms, I swear) - “neeeeer burrrrr, durrrr, da frontman went on this whole speech through the WHOLE SET [15-30seconds, 60 max, and I’m the one with time-blindness] about inclusion and other gay ladyboy stuff. what is he, some dyed-hair SJW [redacted for heinous expletives, even for this review]?”
No, idiot. Have you had a girlfriend ever, bro? Hope not.
Lochie’s preaching the same message the other vocalists have in spurts across the evening. Not ‘entire time’, just brief calls to action and common sense. And if you’re all “burrr durr-dahurr, dat sounds like wussy language lol!!11!1!!one” - have a slice of this track. Sit down, shut up. Troglodyte. Don’t you have swamps to be Mike Myers in? Fuhgettaboutit [again - best NY/Boston/Jersey accent here, include dismissive hand-wave for emphasis]
Sorry, spicy moment. But seriously, who cares? Who especially cares when you’ve had four sorcerers cast Control on you at 20th level (I don’t DM DnD, not even my main squeeze, reference might suck). Who super-especially cares when the final boss has been levelling and grinding on some end-game crowd-control that makes me embarrassed about my Hildryn Prime, finally?
That’s not just some freakin’ guy/gal/person fronting a band. None of them were.
These vocalists are using ESP or some kind of intrapsychic technique and it just works. But particularly, Lochie’s control of a room, superimposed by just straight menacing, thrashing bandmates, is one of many X-factors you won’t necessarily pick up until you see these guys live. And they say MK Ultra wasn’t a whole thing.
That’s when everything I’ve waffled about to this point clicks into place. Don’t you love when the brain-scatter forms a coherent thought? Love those rare moments for us, chat.
Boom, penny drops on this pretentious, pseudo-intellectual blogging dunderhead.
Inner scene-kid letting out a very loud, impatient refrain of ‘well, duh!’.
CONCLUSION (FINALLY):
So, there you have it. I’ve presented the Results table, we’ve gone through those. Now for a tie-off statement about my answer to your/my/our whinge-question regarding who headlined what:
That is why you’re seeing Alpha Wolf headline this tour - even/?especially with the titanic, meteoric rise of Malevolence happening in real-time.
That is why you’re seeing them play an endless run of packed-out shows over multiple weeks. Delivered with palpable gusto, and not the customer-service job forced kind either.
That is why I defy tropes about hardcore and metalcore being something you’re supposed to I don’t know, grow out of and become permanently insufferable at The Tote wanking on about Anata’s 2004 opus Under A Stone With No Inscription (definitely not sporadically this guy, not reading the room again to a thirsty punter, their eyes darting about for an exit)
It’s why the crowd was not, in fact, all seventeen-year-olds in Bad Omens shirts or whatever dumb trope my mind had prepared (also, who cares if so?) It was across demographics, boundaries of any kind, really.
It’s also why I didn’t stand out in a Meth Leppard shirt as much as I thought I would. That’s right, grinders. I peeped quite a few of you - secret’s safe with me. Same with even a few of you black metal fans. It’s okay. It’s mum.
Also, listen to Meth Leppard. Absolutely tits two-piece grindcore from SA. Methinks you metallic-hardcore/hardcore/etc fans will enjoy ém, they’re punk and blasty.
Enjoy that tour, fellas!
Those and many more reasons I don’t have time for, from tonight. They’re why I am concluding this review by stating that, spurned as you clearly were by tonight’s four-punch salvo of top-notch ‘core bands, I’ve got three words for Geelong:
I am proud.
WANT COOL TOURS TO KEEP HAPPENING AT YOUR LOCAL?
WELL THEN! ERADICATE RULED-POINTS BETWEEN DISTANCES:
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ALSO - GET TICKETS ALREADY TO THE REMAINING SHOWS!
Signing off with my very bad rock-Dad-joke slogan now.
As Always,
Peace, Love and Grindcore xoxo - Brady.
Special Addendum:
Support Local Bands, Support Local Venues, Support The Scene.
Invite The Most Uppity capital-M Metalhead To Your Next Powerviolence Show, And Film The Results. Thanks!
INNER-STRENGTH LINK-CHECK:
We’re entirely volunteer-run/led, in our own time. A massive amount of work goes into ISC (you actually don’t want to know how much), but that’s also largely by passion and personal choice. Don’t pity my choices!
We have always been and remain an advertisement-free, no paid advertisements (just stoke and promotion), nothing.
Turns out, operating many digital products and hardware in the day and age of live-service isn’t cheap.
Unemployed as I am (currently - I’ve got hardcore-kid perseverance, I’m good), I’m not going to rattle the can too loudly.
If you want to help us cover operating costs, or even just facilitate more schadenfreude for yourself, I’ve set up a Ko-Fi page because the idea of subscription models doesn’t sit right with me just yet.
Buying me a coffee = my team also dealing with less severe ADHD symptoms! Everyone wins! Especially those poor souls in group-chat. It’s one-off, just whatever you feel is worth it or what you can afford at this time.
Thank you, even if you don’t donate - Brady.