Art Of Burning Water/Famine - split 7" and some loose thoughts on the current UK scene

This was penciled in to come out last year (if you remember the last time I wrote about this band), but instead they released an LP, a split tape with Containment from London, a split 7" with Nothing Clean from Leicester (a band a highly recommend if you miss Gets Worse and want to hear a UK band do Powerviolence the way it should fucking sound) and a remix tape, all in the past year, I've compared them to Melvins, not just they are the most obvious influence but because they also try to emulate their insane release schedule.

Unfortunately they've been forced to cancel all of their shows this Summer due to vocalist/guitarist Grief getting injured before they were supposed to play Supersonic festival in Birmingham.  I was disappointed to hear about that as they don't seem (or at least rarely) play outside of London and playing a festival like that is the kind of recognition they really deserve, of any genre I think of them as one of the best live UK bands active right now.  I encourage everyone to buy their records, not to offset any medical costs (thankfully this is still a country where healthcare is considered a human right) but because they're a solid band who deserve all the support they get.

Famine are a three piece Grindcore band from Leeds who sprang from the family tree of bands coming from The Afternoon Gentlemen.  While I'm thinking about current bands from Leeds, I also want to recommend Lugubrious Children, three piece Powerviolence band who've just done a tour of USA (more and more of our DIY bands seem to be doing that, Endless Swarm, Powerviolence from Edinburgh, Dawn Ray'd Blackened Crust from Liverpool from the ashes of We Came Out Like Tigers, at the time of writing Mister Lizard, arty Powerviolence from London have just finished roaming the States...what was I talking about, oh yeah, bands from Leeds) and Hex, gender balanced Thrash/PV.

EDIT: now available from Super Fi bandcamp as pay what you want

Agathocles ‎– Total Fucking Chimpoggerthocles • Live At Chimpyfest 2016 tape or: the time Mincecore pioneers got too drunk to play or be trusted with microphones

Sorry again for the long silence, I've been busy doing grown up things like working a full time job to keep the roof over my head in the house I moved into earlier this year, but I did pick up some things at this year's Obscene Extreme and Chimpyfest to keep doing posts until October at least.

Speaking of Chimpyfest, I've been taking pictures at DIY fests since last year and I actually have quite a few from the performance this was recorded at, I thought I'd narrate with what I remember.

Day 2 of Chimpyfest 2016 ended on a high, Tools Of The Trade from Malaysia and Looking For An Answer from Spain fucking smashed it for joint best performances of the fest, but then......then Agathocles stumbled onstage.  Obviously drunk they began soundchecking (the first 15 minutes of side I is just soundcheck), the guitarist had stripped down to his boxers, Jan had seemed to handover bass responsibilities to someone else (I've heard they're a member of the Dutch band, Pancreatic Purulence who played earlier that day but I'm not sure if that's right).  When they were finally ready Jan was nowhere to be seen, so the drummer took a mic asked where he was then threw it on the ground, which fucked off the soundguys at T.Chances.  The white guy with a ponytail (don't know his name, sorry) rushed up to the stage, asked the drummer why they were being disrespectful to their equipment, which was just brushed off (the two guys who do sound at T.Chances are good people who do a better job than you'd expect at a dive Punk venue, but DON'T EVER FUCK WITH THEIR EQUIPMENT), Jan finally showed up, in a denim jacket with no shirt and a headband, giving the appearance of Hank Von Helvete from Turbonegro if he somehow managed to let himself go even further, stammered "sorry we're all drunk, we'll try to play some D-Beat."

They were a fucking mess

They only had audible vocals for the first few songs as Bev, the other soundman at T.Chances began confiscating mics and leads as a punitive measure for throwing one on the ground before they started. 

Then Jan tried singing without a microphone (if you've ever seen the documentary Another State Of Mind, it was like the scene when the tour got to Baltimore and the sound men freaked out and took the microphones away from Minor Threat so Ian just started to lead the crowd in a giant sing along, but much less inspiring). 

Tutek who does Lost Data Productions gave Jan, I think one of his smaller cameras to pretend it was a mic.

Then Jan went for a ride.

Did I mention they were all very drunk?  They were very drunk.

Eventually someone found a mic and a lead Bev had missed, just in time for Jan to have a touching duet with the Guitarist from the Polish band Deterrence.

The drummer decided it was sleepy time so he got swapped out for the girl from the Mexican band Nephyla.

Then, whatever the fuck this was supposed to be happened.

Aaaaand this is when my camera ran out of batteries, the guitarist handed over to the guy from Deterrence and Bev the soundman took over bass, because why the fuck not by this stage.  The whole thing ended in this weird jam session with no member of Agathocles actually onstage.  The Chimpyfest crew conspired with Grindfather Productions to release this tape with fest pre-order tickets for this year's edition.  There was a picture floating around Facebook of two members of the band passed out on the staircase of the hostel they were staying in.

[If someone could put a link to it in the comments I'll edit this post and put it here]

A lot of these pictures I took wound up in the liner notes for this tape, which is fine, just would have been nice to be credited is all.

DOWNLOAD