Heck's Matt Reynolds takes flight. Photo: Kimberley Bayliss
A mic stand is thrown to the floor, band members are launching themselves in to the crowd, a stage diver has enthusiastically propelled themselves from the stage, and we are only half way through the first song. It’s that kind of gig. Tonight is the album launch for Heck’s debut album and it is fair to say that both band and audience are up for it.
Playing their album Instructions in full from start to finish to mark it being unleashed upon the world, Heck play a ferocious set of thunderous riff packed songs all performed at breakneck speed that are part thrash metal, part hardcore, and feel like having a barrage of artillery fire go off right in your tab holes. For all of the aggression of their songs all the members of Heck are disarmingly nice young chaps, and when they’re not swinging from the rafters or beating their instruments in to submission, they talk about how happy they are to be performing tonight. It’s all genuine too and you can tell that this launch night means a lot to them as they apologies for not being able to play Nottingham for a while.
The first time I caught Heck, then named Baby Godzilla, it would have been at the Canalhouse and, naturally, they all ended up in the canal in a rubber dinghy. It was that kind of show. There are no dinghies tonight but that’s not to say that their theatrical tendencies haven subsided with time. In fact it’s the opposite. At various moments during their set band members are hanging from the Rescue Rooms balcony, straddling the perspex box that houses the soundman, performing on top of the bar at the back of the room while bar staff admirably carry on serving drinks, and in the middle of the floor surrounded by the beer’ed up and head-banging crowd.
Nottingham has a fine history of producing exciting and distinctive heavy rock bands and Heck are proudly carrying on that tradition.
Heck album launch for Instructions was at the Rescue Rooms on Friday 11 March 2013.
Instructions by Heck is out now via NPAG Industries. Read what we thought about it on the LeftLion website.
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