Few bands would have the rock and roll kahonies to snatch the turd out of the fan in the way that Reavers did tonight. Both support bands pulling out at short notice would usually put a bit of a dampener on proceedings; and taking the stage in front of a largely inactive, un-warmed up and pissed off audience would normally be enough to put the willies up even the most gig hardened bands. However, these hairy chappies, saviours of an otherwise disappointing evening, were in no mood to be cowed.
Reaver’s owned the room the moment they struck their first chord, sounding like you might expect a bastard mutation of Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath and Guns and Roses to sound if it were injected with plutonium and instructed to travel the world bringing rock and roll justice to the righteous, and dealing out harmonic destruction in turn to the wicked.
The first tune, ‘Automaton’, announces their arrival in a way that leaves you in no doubt who is wearing the trousers in this relationship, mixing classic rock with a more modern, edgy sound and setting off their laid-back stage presence a treat. While the guitar vigilante style runs throughout their set, the pendulum swings wildly from something approaching soulful and touching, to pants-down rock that makes you want to grow your hair, pierce your nipples and change your name to Crusher.
It warms the cockles to see a band so well rehearsed. Reavers consists of three brothers, Gareth on drums, Chris on guitar and Andy on Bass, and their jail-house tattoo front-man Wayne.
With enough hair between them to put an end to premature male baldness, Chris and Andy provide a masterful display of axe-wielding on guitar and bass, with Wayne delivering his vocals with a clarity that contrasts sharply with his spiny metal demeanour. In the bar afterwards as we’re admiring his impressive Mohawk, he says he’s glad to have pulled it off, just days after almost partying his balls off at Glastonbury. The man truly suffers for his art.
At first glance, you wonder what drummer Gareth hides behind his perfectly cultivated Texan bad-boy’s moustache, but after less than two songs it becomes clear that a man of such rhythmic savagery requires sturdy facial hair of the same calibre, simply to contain his inner beast. His beats are imaginative, solid and, at times, as heavy and deadly as uranium.
The stand-out track, for me, had to be their final encore, ‘Mexico’, which has the catchy drive of a true classic. It wound the show up in style and sent everyone home with a smile on their face and ringing in their ears. Check these guys out at Moles in Bath on 9 July. You won’t be disappointed.
