On the back of the release of their long-awaited second album, Avalanche Party brought their brand of garage punk from the wilds of the North Yorkshire Moors to Sidney & Matilda on Friday night, with support from the wonderful, all-queer, all-singing Sheffield punks Cattle Grid.
With an over five-year wait for the release of Der Träuma Über Alles (or ‘The dream above all else’ in our softer-sounding mother tongue), Avalanche Party had a lot to live up to after the high-energy promise of their first outing, 24 Carat Diamond Trephine.
Originally scheduled for recording in 2020, the band’s second album was eventually captured in 2022 at Rancho de la Luna – the home studio of Dave Catching (Queens of the Stone Age) – after inevitable Covid delays. It’s been another couple of years since then, but it’s finally here, and it was well worth the wait!
Home listening sessions have revealed some stone-cold bangers on the album, so, heavy with anticipation, we headed to the subterranean sweatbox in Sidney & Matilda on Friday 14th March to find out how it translated live.
First though, as is to be expected from a Jarred Up-promoted show, the support came from yet another of Sheffield’s solid crop of current bands, Cattle Grid.
It was my first time seeing Cattle Grid live, and following their contribution to Teah Lewis’ International Women’s Day coverage in a recent issue of the mag, they were firmly on my radar.
They didn’t disappoint. They’re simply a lot of fun. The set is a mixture of cleverly crafted punk vignettes and high-energy offbeat covers. You’ve got witty originals highlighting the absurdity of catcalling, alongside an unexpected cover of Slipknot’s ‘Duality’. Sounds good, right?
If their stage personas are anything to go by, they’re clearly very funny people too – the chat between songs is self-aware and bursting with charisma. Add in an electric violin, floating or stabbing its way through each track, and I’m all in. Go see ’em next chance you get!
Stage set for Avalanche Party then, and much like the wait for the second album, it’s not a disappointment – it’s actually better than I could have expected. With confidence bordering on arrogance, lead singer Jordan Bell spends a good portion of the set up close and personal with the crowd, oozing Messianic levels of strut.
The confidence is warranted. His vocal range pushes more buttons than he’s bothered to button up on his silk shirt, and he’s got a set of tunes behind him that are setting the room alight. Throughout, the feral wall of sound pouring out of the five-piece feels perpetually on the edge of spilling into chaos.
Guitarist and sax player Jared Thorpe clambers around the cramped stage, pulling a physics-defying range of facial expressions from beneath his double top knot. The entire band attack each track with a pent-up release – maybe in part thanks to their hefty lay-off. Either way, they absolutely rip the arse out of this set.
For me, the new stuff feels like more than just progression for the band – it’s transformation. ‘Nureyev Said It Best’, ‘Shake the Slack’ and ‘John Coltrane’s Moscow Skyscraper’ (this one’s my favourite – the opening riff was teased throughout the set and got me every time!) all stand out in an hour-long set chock-full of high-energy bangers.
Hopefully, it’s not another five years before we get more from this lot.
Have a listen here:
