With Then It Exploded, Infernal Grace and Easy Eights
Reviewed by Thomas Needham
Photographed by Thomas Needham
As of re-writing this article, it’s been a month since this gig (my bad, been a busy boy) and a lot has happened since. Anyway, guess who’s back!
Hint: it’s not Ozzy Osbourne!
Once these titans of yesteryear die, that’s it. Curtains. Astute observations on the matters of mortality aside, the point I mean to raise is the increasingly pervasive idea that there is nobody to pass the baton to. YUNGBLUD seems like a lovely fella but he’s hardly the type to cartel-style execute seventeen cats – marking the distinction between a rockstar and a rockstar.
Truthfully, there’s neither the appetite nor the market for what is new. Culture is not being made (or at least popularised), instead it’s repackaged, reproduced and regurgitated. Conglomerates spend their hard-earned wonga gobbling up the rights to all your favourite artists, from royalties to licensing to brand deals to streaming. Welcome to the world of stuck culture. Remember kids, nobody dared wear a dress before Harry Styles. Maybe he’ll make a song about religion next! Very bold.
Those at the top don’t know what people want and those at the bottom don’t either. Remember the five-year run of sausage roll-related Christmas number ones? You can thank our Nottingham ‘betters’ for that. There are more musicians today than ever. Not that you’d know it. Never has the music industry been so big, yet so small. A great cultural ouroboros where in 2023 streaming services hosted 184 million songs. By the end of 2024 that number had rocketed to over 202 million. 95% of artists have fewer than 1000 monthly listeners. Rocking in the free world indeed.
We don’t need a new Oasis, we need a band that kills Oasis. This is inconceivable to do solely online, the internet has failed to be ‘the great leveller’, the barriers between consumer, creative and corporation have simply shifted. With entire tastes and trends and now even ‘music’ itself curated by machine learning algorithms, music is spoon-fed rather than sought out, discarded rather than doted on.
In this era of the hologram concert, the TikTok snippet, the deepfake and AI trough-slop, it’s never been more important to support your local music scene. Most venues and artists don’t have a pot to piss in, let alone a window to throw it out of. You may well not like or care for what comes out of Leicester musically but at the very least engage with that is real, tangible and in desperate need of at the very least your attention. Don’t like it? Change it.
The lifeblood of Leicester has always been the passionate people who are a part of it, so get your skin in the game – that’s the big difference. Speaking of- Big Difference Debuts! While it’s hardly a novel concept to give a platform to new artists, it’s absolutely integral. Heading into the venue, I was elated over how utterly packed it was, ducking and diving directly to the bar to down all their nukie browns. My transformation into Kevin continues at a pace.
This night in particular saw Then It Exploded… take to the stage first. Striking me as an inexplicable mix of Blue Oyster Club and Weezer, their original material encompasses rambunkshush, warblingly distorted, dad-rock guitars with a stilted panache that’s more intriguing than it is seemingly contradictory.
Conor’s lead guitar work is greedily sweeping and ever-present; it’s the dominating force behind this stylistic tug-of-war. Drummer Jean can certainly hold a driving drumbeat; he offers the foil to Conor’s indiscriminate embellishments. The rhythms of each song involve the same derivative snare, kick-drum, hi-hat backbeat that gives the band their jilted edge, especially on songs like Always an Optimist.
It’s a welcome dynamic that I hope they continue to explore, it’s characterful and endearing in a way that allows you to enjoy the easy-listening. Jean has the consistency down and as the band continues to expand their repertoire as performers and songwriters, he’ll be able to bring out more of his character, expanding upon the occasional time signature changes and fills already in their work.
Mike may not be the most traditionally bewitching of frontmen, but there’s no need to be. There’s a complete lack of ego to Then It Exploded… that makes the band a simple pleasure to enjoy. The fact that they relish performing makes life as an audience member an easy breeze. It was bassist Katie who was the real unsung hero of their set. Laying down the low end, her jaunty basslines added a solid accompaniment to Gillibrand’s vocals. Then It Exploded… is a band to keep your eye on, although that might be a bit reductive, spoiler alert but you should keep a beady eye on every band in this article.
Never before have I been so convinced that the children yearn for the metal. More than that, they yearn for Tiny Tim’s 24-minute cover of Rebel Yell but people aren’t ready for that conversation. The floor was packed, the basement sweltering, the audience joyfully belting along to War Pigs.
Ozzy Osbourne’s death has marked a renaissance in interest and a warranted reappraisal of metal as a genre. Infernal Grace gives the goods. Explicitly rejecting the sham of noughties nu-metal, they harken back to the olden goldies of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Guns ‘N’ Roses, perhaps to their detriment.
Metal won’t be reclaimed from the Fred Dursts of the world without bringing something new to the table. Time is of the essence. If they can cement themselves as songwriters beyond simply covers and lean into the newfound interest, they’ll go far. Infernal Grace has the chops; now they need to bring the sauce.
The band is obscenely tight, Philene on bass, Reon on drums, Isaac on rhythm guitar and Jack on lead did not put a foot wrong. Jack in particular is a first-rate lead guitarist with his extended solo in their cover of Iron Maiden’s ‘Seek and Destroy’ being rather splendid indeed.
For the first time in my oh so illustrious career as a writer for MiL, I had members of the audience approach me to give their two cents on the performance, specifically their scepticism about frontman Harry’s vocals.
For me, singing is a craft honed with practice and dedication; fundamentally, it can be improved. Yeah, he tried a hand at Rocket Queen by Guns ‘N’ Roses and it didn’t quite meet the mark – fuggedaboutit! I can count with exactly zero fingers, how many people I know who can pull off an Axl Rose song – hell, even Axl Rose can’t pull off Axl Rose songs.
Good on Harry for pushing the limits and trying something new. More acts, especially in such early days, should take risks and potentially fail than play safe and stagnate. It’s a learning process, refined with time and effort. My mind focuses instead on stage presence, especially for bands that harken back to the stellar excesses of glam metal. That’s something that either comes to you naturally or it doesn’t, and the audience can always sniff you out. Fowler is a natural. Despite the packed stage, he remained an enigmatic frontman who carried Infernal Grace with all the necessary gumption and gusto. Jolly good show.
To those sceptics, I say let’s sit back and wait for original material – only then will we see what metal Infernal Grace is made of.
Sharing my affinity for alliteration arrived Easy Eights, let’s see how overly obnoxious my writing will get now. The third band of the evening did the best kind of covers – they made the song their own.
Now I have no clue who this ‘Post Malone’ is outside of his tangential connection to SkyDoesMinecraft and the insufferable bus rides home from school where the miscreants at the back of the bus would blast his song ‘Rockstar’. So imagine my surprise that a hard rock cover of said song would not only be listenable but actually enjoyable.
Comprised of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Isaac, guitarist Harry and for one night only George of Injury Detail, who filled in for drummer Sam McClean *. They’re a brash gaggle of rockers who didn’t get the audience turnout they deserved. I was none the wiser that this was their very first gig until Isaac gave the game away, straight out the gate, their original material specifically Enigma barrels over the audience with reckless disregard. With an incessant hi-hat jive and lyrics delivered in a deluge, using my 6 in music GCSE, I shall diagnose it as scary Mr Brightside. And that’s not a problem – do not trust people who don’t like Mr Brightside.
- (Rest in peace Ant Hill – never before have I related to those sad Bart Simpson edits, call me if you want to pimp some live recordings of Pedestrian Crossing – how tragic that that song may never receive an official release.)
The fourth and final act of the night was Publicity. Their brand of accessible indie music isn’t my kind of thing, admittedly. All the kids these days talking about Wonderhoarse and The Fontaines- I’m getting too old to keep up. No more Mosh for me. Give us a John Smiths.
I felt this most as the band blasted through a cover of R U Mine. Being the curmudgeonly old git that I am, I’ll be plain, I really hate AM (and I did long before that hack-fraud ‘Brad Taste in Music’). That’s not Publicity’s fault; the audience was certainly enjoying it and objectively it was a solid, straight cover – it’s just not my thing. I’ll leave it as this, the opening to ‘One For The Road’ sounds like a Hamilton song.
It just felt a little mellow, as if the band was always holding back until the very end, primarily affecting their original material. Now, once they got to those finales, that’s when the real fun began. Wearing their inspirations on their sleeve, All Along the Watchtower saw the band at their best. Drummer Zach consistently lays down a funky groove and bassist Ethan takes the liberty to add his own jumpy trills that highlight his skill.
As a vocalist, Phil excels when really going for those notes; he’s a capable and confident frontman who had the crowd’s full support. He’s also a lyricist with a lot of potential; the lead into the finale of Heavy with the lyric ‘you know you want to… three, four’ as lead guitarist Josh brought it all home was a particular highlight. Each member brought their a-game to the performance and when given the opportunity, they ran a mile.
Despite only just starting their stint in Leicester’s music scene, the potential of each and every one of tonight’s acts is plain to see. As they perform and perfect their craft, I hope they continue to grow and improve. We at Music in Leicester wish them every success. They’re all certainly worthy of your support and attention.
If any of these bands have caught your eye, Then It Exploded…, Easy Eights and Publicity will be playing a Bands Without Borders gig at Firebug on the 25th of August, with all proceeds going towards medical aid for Palestine. Give it a gander!
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What a brilliant review! – Thomas, you’re a genius! 😉