BIG BLACK / HEAD OF DAVID / THE BAMBI SLAM

University Of London Union

YOU ASKING? Yeah, I'm dancing. The Bambi Slam are on stage.

Down below the stage, where elbows fly and hearts soar, there's no oxygen, no space. I want to stop dancing but I can't. The Bambi Slam's bucket of rock'n'roll suicide is powering its attack with even louder decibels. Roy Slam is moving in frenzied spasms, his guitar playing rabid chords, and the bass and drums are rubbing salt into the wounds. Demented, feverish, fast; The Bambi Slam are still on course.

Head Of David blast off next. Pow, pow! So this is the new sonic boom bang crash. I like it. Guitars spark like drills kissing cast iron, the bass and drums moulded together into one big pulsating mass of percussion. This is the performance that EMI missed out on at the ICA. This noise is overwhelming. My whole body is shaking without my consent.

And still there is more. Three middle-aged Yanks with spectacles, guitars, bass and the most unrelenting drum machine in the world take the stage. They are Big Black. Louder than loud, harder than hard and faster than fast, they stampede through a whirlwind of songs that verge on hardcore thrash, building up a tension that's almost sexual. Take 'Kerosene'. A song about small town frustrations developing into nihilistic rebellion, it winds you up and then releases you in a rush of full throttle guitars.

Long live the new noise!

RON ROM

BIG BLACK

LONDON ULU

LIKE YOU, I always thought Big Black had several screws loose. What I hadn't bargained for was that they'd be splitting personalities between scrawny whiteboys making a lot of guitar-fuss and confidence tricksters trying to shock and more by bringing the content citizen's worst fantasies to life. Apres 'Atomizer', they were at their most explicit yet: incest and cropophilia were delved into with more detail, as if fear wasn't their worst enemy.

Exactly what do the spawn of the mid-American Bible-belt do for kicks? They take fear as the only frontier of reason, add a bit of penis-envy and proclaim themselves cold stars. Which they are. Schizophrenia is diagnosed here due to their disturbing objectivity about fist-fucking, gang-raping and other afflictions of idiots who consider themselves beyond society. Needless to say, Black is the colour to fear here. Search me as to why.

I mean, take Roland as an example. She's the drum machine, who never splutters or seems vulnerable. Her hard graft has nothing to do with 'Kerosene's slut, the sperm receptabte who lures all the bored boys to an uncertain fate. Ear-splitting harmonics are subjugated to her beat, as it rattled the cage's bars, pleading for a Big Black dancefuck extended re-mix in so-so surroundings.

DELE FADELE

I got these from unattributed clippings.