Reviews

While genres of music usually foster a spirit of camaraderie among their followers, at times punk has a slightly different edge to it thanks to the disparate styles of music that get tagged with the 'punk' label.

This was definitely the case tonight as the four bands were easily divided into two very different classes, those being light hearted pop-punk and much more traditional old school punk rock.

It was this harder edged style that started the evening in the form of youngsters Beetlejuice.

Liam of Beetlejucie.

Having spent the summer playing whenever the opportunity presented itself, including a stand out set at the Vale Earth Fair, they have really upped their game tremendously over the past few months and are sounding truly ferocious.

Coming out tonight dressed as Spartans in the style of the film/comic book '300' Beetlejuice's charisma, combined with their basic but blasting punk sound really made them come across much better than I had anticipated.

Their set, which combined a few covers with a lot of original material, including some new songs, really made them stand out as Guernsey's new young punk hopes and got the moshing started early on in the night.

Pikey of 2 Minutes 2 Late.

In contrast to the hard edged rawness of Beetlejuice came the pop-punk of 2 Minutes 2 Late who were making their debut performance in front of the L'Ancresse Bay crowd and all told it was a successful showing.

Mixing original tunes with a selection of covers from bands like Blink-182 things started out a little slow with the large crowd appreciative but distant.

When the band pulled out a cover of Blink classic 'The Rock Show' though, things really kicked off with the pit area filled with pogo-ing bodies which continued through the rest of 2 Minutes 2 Late's set.

What was really noticeable about 2 Minutes 2 Late's set tonight was their original material which stood up next to their covers brilliantly and promises great things for the future.

James of Spat.

Third on stage tonight came Spat, making their final appearance as a band and from the off chaos reigned.

Spat's brand of hard edged punk rock influenced by the likes of The Exploited, Black Flag and other old school bands has always had an air of chaos about it, but tonight that really came to the fore with the band running through a selection of their own songs which stirred up the biggest and most intense mosh I have ever seen at L'Ancresse.

Lee of Spat.

By the end of the band’s set the stage had been invaded by impromptu 'guest vocalists', all three of the band's microphones had been sent crashing to the stage floor and, in a final moment of mayhem, James Burton destroyed his bass guitar as Jack Sunderland swung his guitar wildly at the stage leaving things in a wall of feedback as Spat were carried over the crowd, triumphant.

Following Spat is never an easy task and tonight that was exacerbated by the pure mania that the band had invoked, so Poor Attempt had their work cut out for them, and tonight weren't entirely successful.

Facing a drastically reduced crowd, as they came on past the seemingly inevitable 11 o'clock watershed for the younger members of the crowd, Poor Attempt did their best to get people going with their upbeat pop-punk but for the most part the audience weren't into it.

Stu of Poor Attempt.

As ever their original songs were clearly fantastic examples of the genre but tonight the bands performance was far from as tight as I have seen in the past and this slightly sloppy approach really didn't help them.

By the end of their set, with a run through of Blink-182's 'Dammit' helping, they got a few of the more eager dancing and original 'Woah, No, Yeah, Oh No!' really stood out once again as a great song, but tonight they were never going to win thanks to several factors including following the raw chaos of Spat and the later time slot.

Tonight though belonged to Spat, and while it's a shame to see them go I was left with the feeling that Beetlejuice could well be a worthily frenzied successor and, hopefully this won't be the last we see of the members of Spat as other projects will hopefully follow.