Pulled Apart By Horses - The Black Heart, London – 10/06/14

12 June 2014, 16:00 | Written by Dannii Leivers

(Live)

(Pulled Apart By Horses)

“This is exactly what we wanted to do tonight,” enthuses Pulled Apart by Horses frontman Tom Hudson, a real sense of pride in his voice as he reviews the night’s achievements: a room strewn with discarded bodies, a ceiling dripping sweat, steam rising from the soaked clothes of those still able to headbang down the front. But what better way is there for Leeds’ finest provocateurs of carnage and thrash to make their return to the London live scene rather than in a tiny sweatbox above a Camden boozer?

Following a mini-tour of the UK, tonight’s show was a ‘secret’ gig announced a week prior. PABH are here at The Black Heart to play new material, but things kick off with reassuringly familiar brutality, the bludgeoning guitars of “V.E.N.O.M” smashing against Hudson’s lacerated screams. Fugazi-sharp guitars and Black Sabbath riffs of the brilliantly silly “Meat Balloon” hold up the pace, guitarist James Brown and bassist Rob Lee thrashing so hard it’s a wonder they haven’t knocked themselves out in the first few minutes. Drummer Lee Vincent is grinning like a maniac while Hudson disappears behind a mass of windmillng hair (he’s accumulated a lot of it recently).

But tonight is supposed to be a showcase of the next chapter in this blood and guts splattered story. The band have already been playing songs from forthcoming album Blood at recent shows, but tonight it seems every other track is a newbie. Intoxicated by the madness, the crowd play at killing each other whether they know the words or not, but cock an ear and it’s obvious that after over two years away, PABH version three is an totally different molten beast.

”Grim Deal” pounds in, a purposeful gleam in its eye, Tom singing about “Not sleeping on the floor no more” and single “Hot Squash” howls and struts sounding like a lost cut from Rated R. “Lizard Baby” is swaggering and sexy with a killer chorus while “Medium Rare” and “ADHD in HD” have also borrowed their dusty desert stomps straight from the Queens Of The Stone Age book of density. The riffs are just as wild and ferocious as before, but in the same way second album Tough Love nipped and tweaked to make the meat leaner, Blood already sounds bigger, more confident and … whisper it, more mature. The band’s bizarre hardcore is far too raw to be “polished”, but this is a more measured breed of chaos.

Then just as we’re beginning to get our heads around the new improved PABH, out comes the demented “High Five, Swan Dive, Nose Dive”. “I’ve got a well fucking wet guitar,” shouts Brown, now brandishing it on his bare chest. Sweat pours and stage divers invade while Hudson shrieks “I’ll make you dance with my balls on fire.” They may not be content to play the class clowns anymore, but on their conquest of obliteration PABH have lost none of their charm, sense of fun or ability to be utterly thrilling.