Many indie types from the 1980s and 1990s were secretly metal fans. But it’s not something they ever really wanted to admit to in public. They’d talk a good game about the Stooges and the Velvet Underground but back home – as was the case with Leeds’s goth overlord Andrew Eldritch, of the Sisters of Mercy – their living rooms were full of AC/DC videotapes. In fact, I’d go further and say the most influential track in the history of alternative music might very well be ‘Kashmir’ by Led Zeppelin rather than one of the hipster-anointed underground classics.
It sometimes feels as though every indie band with one foot in rock has to have their attempt at ‘Kashmir’, all jarring rhythms and slabs of guitar, faintly eastern, very grand. The Jesus Lizard’s version is called ‘Mouth Breather’, and it was the fifth song in their set, and marked the point at which all the younger people who had been hidden in a crowd of men with receding hairlines suddenly all seemed to appear at the front and create a heaving moshpit that never quieted.
The Jesus Lizard emerged in the early 1990s and were co-opted into the grunge wave (they released a split single with Nirvana), and thus became unlikely major label signings along with so many other hopeful punts. Like most of those other punts, they failed to make an impression beyond their already devoted following. Last year, though, they released Rack, their first record in 26 years, and one that bore easy comparison with their 1990s work.
At the Electric Ballroom, they were breathlessly exciting.
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