Badgers Have Feelings Too!

Inkubus Sukkubus - Cauda Pavonis - "The Fleece", Bristol, 31st March 2005

Ohhhh yeah!

Following on from the 2005 tour's opening gig at The Peel, the night of Thursday 31st March saw Inkubus Sukkubus really kick up the pace and set the benchmark for this year's live gigs.

Support came from new starts Abigail's Mercy, and well known dark romantics Cauda Pavonis, always assured of a warm welcome here on their home turf.

Unfortunately due to motorised chaos in West London we missed the first band, arriving at the venue just as Inkubus Sukkubus themselves did, at the start of Cauda Pavonis's set, but I'm told by people I trust that they were very good. Cauda Pavonis themselves turned in a solid performance despite one showstopping technical glitch at the start, including classic tracks from their last album "Sigil", and new ones like "The Morrigan" from their next release, now at long last confirmed for the summer of 2005. I will have a copy of their next album even if it takes pistols at dawn to get hold of one!

And then Inkubus Sukkubus, now solidly a four-piece, took to the stage like they owned it and proved once again just why they truly are one of the best live bands on the current scene. Delivery was faultless, and the magnetism on stage was something you could practically see! Candia as ever took centre stage right at the front, wowing the enthusiastic audience by seeming to sing directly to everyone in the front rows personally, while Jaymz and Adam on guitar and bass respectively dominated the left hand side, presenting a classic-rock style guitar attack battery, while Tony on guitar on the right drove the whole performance forward with stylish and enthusiastic playing.

Even though Jaymz has only been playing with the band for a few months, he's somehow managed to lock straight into the existing vibe, enhancing without harming it, he and Tony produced some true magic on the solos, sometimes playing back-to-back, sometimes throwing rifs back and forth between them, while under it all Adam has been quietly tweaking and re-working the bass lines for many of the classic tracks. The bass is now noticably clearer than it used to be, which coupled with the much richer twin-guitar sound produces a truly wonderful musical base for Candia's siren-like voice.

Badgers? They were in the dressing room on the wall, where various bizarre grafitti informed anyone who cared to look that "Badgers have feelings too", "Equal Rights 4 Badgers", "Save The Badger", plus a very elaborate pentacle next to which someone had disparagingly written "who would bother doing this", which someone else had answered with "someone with a tour bus"!

After the gig and encores the band posed for pictures and gave an interview to "The Apple", a new national environmental newspaper which will be hitting the major bookshops shortly, an interview that will be well worth reading when it comes out. Once the venue had closed down the band plus entourage strolled through the city centre to another pub who's name has now vanished in the haze, the high point of which was all of us (about 20 Goths) being "Ozzied" by a group of three very drunk townies who promtly legged it when we all stared at them en-masse!

All in all a truly fantastic night. Roll on the next gig!

- Pyromancer, Leeds, 4th April 2005.

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