Excuse the cheap opening gambit and the direct lift of a superlative Supersuckers lyric, but you have to admit that there is something "pretty fucked up" about the matinee show concept for gigs.  I was barely awake as I made my way through the oppressively hot and busy midday throng of George A Romero's finest offspring, only to become totally confused by the fact that loads of young kids in hip and groovy Kerrang favoured band T-shirts seemed to be walking in completely the opposite direction to me.  Surely these guys and gals will be clambering at the chance to get up close and personal with Alexisonfire guitarist Wade MacNeil (he of Black Lungs fame) in such an intimate environment?  Suddenly I was starting to wonder if the gig might actually have been cancelled? Thankfully I was wrong.

Taking the stage, or floor, as we were in the downstairs bar this afternoon folks, at almost 1:30 PM precisely were Denmark post punk quartet Iceage.  Wearing their guitars at a height that would make certain members of Arctic Monkeys look like Rob Lane, the band's ramshackle sound was perhaps a little too art house for this time of the day, and with the sun licking through the venue's door at sporadic intervals, you couldn't help but think that tunes like 'White Rune' might be perfect at 1:30 AM when you are buzzing your tits off in a club somewhere, but here the guys were simply making up the lo-fi numbers. That's not to say that there weren't some brief flashes of excellence, in fact 'New Brigade' actually had me thinking that I should dig out some Divisions Of Laura Lee when I got home, however just as spontaneously as their performance began Ice Age were soon exiting the stage albeit now through a rapidly growing crowd, and they never did mange to tune them damn guitars.

Its worth mentioning at this point that a good few people I had asked to go to this show had been put off by the matinee aspect, most expecting it to be rammed with younger gig goers all here to see one band (Black Lungs), but that really couldn't have been further from the truth, and as the venue started to resemble the type of open plan free for all you see in photos from those classic eighties hardcore shows I have to admit that I had actually started to warm to this absurd afternoon gig concept that I was now very much a part of.

So, with the opening gambit of "Hi. We're the Black Lungs from Toronto, Canada, and you guys must be on crystal meth to be up this early in the day" it was time to welcome Wade MacNeil's other band back to Cardiff, and I really wasn't expecting what was to follow.  Having last seen Black Lungs in this very venue's more spacious upstairs area this was a much tighter and dare I say it "more full throttle punk rock version" of the band than the one that delivered the excellent if somewhat sombre 'Send Flowers' album.  If my initial introduction to Black Lungs had been a great surprise on that previous tour where I was only there to see The Loyalties, then this afternoon I was simply blown away by what I witnessed. Even operating on 50% efficiency, which is what Wade reckoned they were cruising at, his band ripped through a muscular and aggressive set of songs, mostly lasting less than 2 minutes in length and including their superb current single 'Valley Of The Dolls', Black Lungs sounded like the long lost soul brothers of every great Uber Rock approved punk rock band you could think of all rolled up into one. The band's performance was that intense I didn't even get a chance to make any of my usual crib notes, and all I could find scrawled on my piece of paper was the following question "I wonder what Black Lungs would be like when they have the needle bending the 100% efficiency mark?"  Now that is a frightening prospect.

Another frightening prospect is the fact that all three bands here this afternoon would be repeating their performances later in the day across the Severn Estuary in Bristol, and when you are a band as intense as Fucked Up, you have to take your hat off to all involved for running with this crazy idea and making it work quite so well. 

Having seen hardcore punk's answer to Hawkwind in this very same venue just a few years ago, I knew what was about to happen next, and before the opening crescendo of 'Ship of Fools' could unravel itself fully the irrepressible Damian Abraham was off and climbing on everything and everyone.  'Two Snakes' and 'Crooked Head' followed in almost quick succession and now we had a gig on our hands, the place resembling a Turkish bath, albeit with only one of us really dressed for the occasion, that being brother Damian of course.  In saying that however he was slightly subdued this afternoon largely due to a serious self inflicted head wound suffered a few days previously. But that didn't stop Damian from enjoying one of his favourite venues to the maximum, and it took an intense run through 'The Other Shoe' to finally make the man mountain realise that if he continued at that pace the stitches in his forehead wouldn't hold forever.

You may have noticed that I've already mentioned a certain psychedelic band in this review, and I've done that for a specific reason, and its not simply because it still amazes me how all six of Fucked Up manage to fit on a stage (or floor) the size of Clwb Ifor's.  Nah I mentioned the masters of space rock due to the fact that as a band Fucked Up have slowly over the last few years been experimenting with their sound and their overall band dynamic and this has never been more apparent than on the newer songs aired here this afternoon.  These tunes are due to be given a full studio release sometime soon via the 'David Comes To Life' album and I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for that baby, I suggest you do too as it all sounds very promising.

Anyway back to the gig at hand and 'No Epiphany' saw a certain frontman sprawled over the venues bar retelling a story that involved some drug taking and being stuck between two doors in a certain place not too far away, an event that had threatened the very moral fabric of today's concept.  OK so its not exactly VH-1 Storytellers I'll grant you that, and I guess that you had to be there, but the simple fact of the matter was that Damian had everyone and I do mean everyone eating out of the palm of his hand, and by the time the matinee finished with a frantic 'Police', you felt sort of safe in knowledge that Fucked Up's work in this city was done for another day.

Heading off back to my car at 4:30 in the afternoon, with the rest of the day ahead of me, I was now thinking what a wonderful experience this matinee show had been, and wondering why there hadn't more of the target audience it had obviously been aimed at present?  Well sadly it would appear that the aforementioned young kids in their hip and groovy Kerrang favoured band T-shirts were by and large more interested in sipping a cans of piss weak lager on the grass outside the city's castle than getting up close and personal with one of their heroes who was playing merely yards away from them.  Now there is something "pretty fucked up" about that right?