Live Review: The Atomic Bitchwax – Manchester

Walking towards the venue on a Sunday night, I could hear the feint sound of music, and upon entering inside, I was surprised that the gig had started earlier than advertised and I’d missed all of 1st support act JiJ and only caught a few songs from Daily Thomson.

The early caught seemed to catch a few out, as more people arrived after Daily Thomson finished, and from what I briefly saw, we missed a really decent live band. The German 3 piece played some great stuff, with psychedelic, stoner riffs blasting out, and the 3 working in harmony to please the sparse crowd, with a final song that had many twists and turns. Will definitely need to catch them again some time.

As punters still stroll in, Rebellion is still far from busy, but The Atomic Bitchwax walk onto the stage at the early time of 8.20pm, with bassist/singer Chris Kosnik pronouncing that they are here to play rock n`roll and they launch into the epic 'Hope You Die' with vocal switches totally in sync, superb solos from guitarist/singer Garrett Sweeny and drummer Bob Pantella laying down the beats, yet it still fails to rouse the static crowd. Well, apart from me headbanging at the back!!

With the promise of a love song, they launch into 'Forty-Five' as Kosnik says "everybody loves a love song" before he mentions that after 20 shows, his voice is bad, but `he’s going to give it a shot` and give it a shot they do, as the song is just brilliant, despite the sound issues for both Kosnik and Sweeny. They have great camaraderie on stage, with Sweeny asking Kosnik to look at this cool t-shirt at the front, but he can’t due to not having his glasses on and after many giggles they start up 'So Come On', which was definitely played with a faster edge than on record, and the drumming is again sublime from Pantella.

"So, do you want a slow song or a fast song?" asks Kosnik, before saying this one if going to be really fast, and oh boy, was 'Giant' played at a breakneck speed, despite the continuing sound issues, this was a gem of a song, and they kept the tempo high with a 'Houndstooth' with a bit of crowd participation halfway through.

Next up comes Kosnik’s favourite, yet the hardest song to play, 'Birth to the Earth' is just staggering beautiful from start to finish, with the bass sounding awesome and Kosnik’s hands are just a blur, and a killer solo from Sweeny, it drew a large round of applause, as the musicianship is something to behold from these seasoned veterans. This then led to the now traditional "Who likes kung fu? We do and we wrote two songs about it!", and with the slow and heavy intro 'War Claw' begins before being ramped up and sounding truly epic.

With a smile on his face that at least three girls were in the crowd, their record is ten apparently, ha ha, they kick out 'Kiss the Sun' which is such a groovy song and flows effortlessly along, to be followed by the awesomeness that is 'Ninja', with Pantella’s drumming like a metronome, they make it look so easy, and his intro leads into 'Coming in Hot'.

The sound problems persisted throughout the set and with the final few songs approaching, and Kosnik getting visibly annoyed during 'Liv a Little', they invite the audience to have a few drinks with them after the show, as they play their final two songs, the blistering 'Force Field' and ending the night with the stunning 'Shit Kicker', as the band walk offstage to a rapturous applause form the assembled audience.