Superego, Zevicon and others at Belushis April 19th 2007
SuperEgo are a criminally overlooked London and Brighton based intelligent rock band who have a sound akin to Muse’s apocalyptic rock. Their live shows are outstanding for an unsigned band, they played tonight inbetween 2 other bands before the headliners Zevicon and blew them both off the stage. The songs are technically complex and well composed, they make great use of piano sounds, which you don’t get enough of these days, and the Matt Belamy/Jeff Buckley style vocals grant the songs with the necessary bombast to match the music. This band reach for the sky’s and hit the fucking heavens! Watching them makes one feel driving energy which, if left unattended, could motivate the more ambitious to go out and unexpectedly wrench the earths core out. Or do a little foot tapping at the very least. Not bad, not bad at all.
We also had to tolerate the dull cod Lilly Allen stylings ofJoey Nightmare, followed by The Capelilos who greedily rampaged through the back catalogues of The Kings of Leon, The Strokes, The Libertines and Babyshambles raping and pillaging riffs and tunes as they went. The audience lapped it up, leaping around and waving their arms around, presumably because they have been told to like this music by Radio One, and, I imagine they were very drunk. In defense of the band, I imagine they are new, learning skills and not yet feeling confident enough to try their own style. If this not the case they should wake up and write their own songs. They have clearly have the technical skills to develop and go far, but we don’t need another shit indie band do we now… Unfortunately the fact that the audience were so into the derivative bands, and showed relative indifference when SuperEgo played suggests these pub nights are not the venue for them.
Zevicon have at their core an amazing guitarist who goes by the name of Alex. This man has the skills to rival artists such as Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky. You can hear it when he plays, and I feel the band would benefit greatly from making his sound more dominant and possibly leaving vocals off some of their tracks. As it stands they have far too much competition for their music, there are plenty of bands with these types of lyrics and vocals, but the music underneath really is something else. Not to criticise the singer, he has a good voice and is a great front man. It just seems obvious that the band, if they were more instrumental, could well hit the big time.