27 Aug 2004 // A review by Epitomised_Drummer
Last night I rocked along to hear
Stardrunk at The Studio bar on K Road to release their new album
Complete Control. I pitched up about 9.30 to catch the end of
Ruptus Jack’s performance.
Ruptus Jack are a good 5 piece mainstream rock band.
I had heard the name, but never had the opportunity to see
Ruptus Jack play live. I was impressed – they were very tight. They have some catchy rock riff’s, not too thrashy, and some good melodic vocals. Unfortunately there was a bit of a lack of crowd for Ruptus Jack’s performance, so the atmosphere wasn’t great, but I think all in all Ruptus Jack had a good solid live sound – pleasing to the ears, and with some good phat guitar sounds !
Milk Milk Lemonade were up second. This was something a bit different, well different on today’s scene anyway.
Milk Milk Lemonade are a three piece rock band who lend them towards a more ‘80s sound. I thought
Milk Milk Lemonade were great – good strong vocals, nice solid drum hook, and solid driving bass. Once again crowd support was lacking – although not to discredit from
Milk Milk Lemonade, they played strong, and did well. They ultimately needed to get into the performance a little more to create a wicked look on stage, but it’s the old trade off of “look wicked” or “play wicked”.
Stardrunk kicked off last, about 11.30pm. It was a little late for me, and I was starting to get tired – that us until
Stardrunk hit the stage with a HUGE amount of energy and power!
Stardrunk's crowd wasn’t too shabby, probably 100 or so people lined the floor – although it probably didn’t look like it in a big venue. During there first song, the singer unfortunately got his mic lead tangled around the mic stand, but still gave it everything! I don’t know how they managed to keep there energy up, and still give a tight performance at that time of night. The PA was quite muffled, but when you walked upstairs, it was crystal clear. I have a feeling this is because all you could hear when you were on the downstairs floor, was the subs as the rest of the PA is aimed at the upstairs lounge. In my opinion, for an unsigned band,
Stardrunk did an awesome job of this album release. They had great advertising, a great venue, great bands, and gave an impressive performance. I'm sure people will be really looking forward to their Hamilton and Tauranga album release parties.
Written by Carl.