Live Review: Poison Fish

What a glorious bloody day. We step out of the midday sun to take a little respite in The Brunswick Hotel with Team VOM. The four-piece hit the stage in Poison Fish shirts (PF's bassist Nick Angeli is the group's guitarist) and kick off the Allergic To Milk album launch. 

Angeli's clutching his trusty Jaguar and a bottle of Very Best and Luke Calarco is wearing his keyboard on a strap slung over his shoulder like a guitar. After a super positive opening message from Calarco they kick into Bins & Tins, a song about local legend and Brunny regular Tinsley Waterhouse. A little bloke of about five wanders up front and sticks his hands over his ears so his elbows poke out. It's cute, but he clearly has no taste. Pretty soon his mum comes and scoops him up. Sorry mate, can't handle the mosh, stay outta the pit. Calarco switches to an electric ukulele that looks like a teeny tiny Telecaster and tells us that this will be bassist Naomi "Omi" Clarke's last gig (boo!). Goodness does that uke sound off. "I finally learnt how to restring a ukulele, which is why it's fuckin' mad outta tune," explains Calarco sheepishly. It's a shame, 'cause this means we don't get the instrument for the last couple tracks, but it does mean Calarco is free to go full howlin' Henry Rollins on Whatever and You Fucked Up.

Heading outside to the second stage we notice some utter chin strap has tagged the massive duck mural overlooking the beer garden in blocky, six-foot tall letters that say POR. From the bottom of our hearts POR, go fuck yourself. On a more positive note, Parmy Dhillion is out back with his band, which includes a good chunk of Damn That River. He's a top-notch vocalist and David O'Hynes is a boss on the skins. With the sun beaming down and a pint in hand there's worse places to be. 

Inside Clawhawk are sporting more Poison Fish shirts (REPRESENT). Team VOM drummer Dan Bergowicz has switched the sticks for lead vocals and guitar and is standing over an impressive array of pedals. These guys just get tighter all the time and Nathan Wiggett's bass lines are thuggish AF, packed with menace and intent. They kick into a track that Bergowicz jokes is "their shitty pop song". It's ear-catching, but they're probably a ways off their pop sell-out moment just yet.

In the garden Sordid Ordeal's Laurence Hewson looks a little lonely on stage. Apparently the drummer's just woken up and the guitarist is ten minutes down the road. Hewson powers on anyhow, matching bluesy riffs with songs about things like introducing your girlfriend to Cherry Bar and then avoiding your ex at Cherry Bar. Eventually he pulls O'Hynes out of the crowd and guitarist Jamie Woodman and bassist Nick Hamdorf materialise. With his makeshift outfit in tow Hewson throws a Blundstone on the front amps and goes to work in earnest. Jason Black eventually makes it and relieves O'Hynes for the last few songs ("He thought the gig was in 1973, you can tell from his shirt.") and they finish with most of the band climbing the furniture.

Inside, the smoke machine is fuming that it has to work on a Saturday. The room's starting to look like a World's Best Mohawk competition and Liquor Snatch bassist 'Flea Thunderpussy' is winning. Extra points for having her bass slung so low it's basically sitting on the floor. It's joyous, it's loud, it's crazy fun. Up the queens of queer punk.

At 6.30 we spy a bloke wandering around with no shoes on and take bets on when he'll be headed to the infirmary. Wait, 6.30? When the fuck did that happen? We're not super keen on missing the end of Mannequin Death Squad but it's burrito time and no mistake. Thankfully MDS make noise on par with planets colliding and you can hear those two wailing just fine over at Sparkly Bear. When we return, a-ha's Take On Me is coming over the stereo and most of the beer garden is struggling to hit that high note.

We only catch a little bit of Two Headed Dog and every second we missed is deeply regretted. The end of their set is a flash of heavy blues genius and the drummer/lead singer Andy Alkemade growls like Morrison.

It's a bit worrying to see Three Quarter Beast are playing outside and before sundown, but spying guitarist Beau Cherry stepping into the venue in a bright red cape and bejewelled black tunic quashes any concerns. They close the outdoor stage with a heap of songs about beasts and the kind of riffs you need to lift with your legs. When Joel "Loops" Cooper and Cherry get howling they could rival Iron Maiden.

Back inside, The Murderballs shouldn't exist. They're a funky punk unicorn. They skip through jazz, rockabilly, 2-tone, metal and rock'n'roll, often in the one song, switching directions on a dime without ever tripping up and eating shit. Plus, they're a hoot. Guitarist Jesse, aka Jen Jen, aka Jennyration X, does his best Elvis The Pelvis in his unbuttoned Hawaiian until his cut-offs fall off revealing lil' pink leopard-print jockeys. In response, Kenny Agis kicks into a slap-happy bass line that kind of makes your eyes pop; Les Claypool would be proud.

Strawberry Fist Cake frontwoman 'Krunchy McSlutface' "fucking hates Midori" and has had "too many bloody shots" already, but that doesn't stop her from taking one off the full tray an audience member brings up to the stage. Krunchy is a punk hurricane. Living, singing chaos in a tutu, as usual. At one point a dude in the crowd takes over vocals while she gleefully upends her scotch (which someone quickly replaces). The French horn is genius, especially on It's Hard To Look Tough With Hayfever. It's a spectacular send-off for drummer Tania 'Yelling Crazy LeFist' Gavranic, who climbs up on the bar at the end and crowd-surfs out.

Pegbucket are probably the only band in Melbourne that have destroyed more guitars than Poison Fish. They might also be the loudest thing ever and you know you're watching the right band when the sound guys are all taking breaks to flip their hair back and forth in the crowd.

Here we are, the Fish course. The piece de reFishstance, perhaps? Poison Fish are playing. It's been pretty much 12 hours since kick-off at this point. It's bloody brave doing an all-day punk festival for your album launch. Chances are everyone's going to be well on their way to comatose and you'll probably be hot on their trail. The boys have been here since open, but silhouetted in a deep red/blue glow they look good. Sharp. They've come a long way since 2010. Early Fish shows were loud and angry, but unfocused. They would be nearly unrecognisable to the tightly coiled beast that's tearing through Allergic To Milk. Not that they've turned down the volume or the aggression, the opposite if anything; they've just learnt how to direct it, and when to leash it in and when to let it off.

Josh Gagliardi's vocals start up with a tinny echo as though he's singing from the bottom of an upended shipping container. Green smoke billows out, hiding the drums, and even if we can't see Pete Lancaster we can definitely hear him back there punishing the tubs. The show mostly covers the new LP, with a few touches from their older releases. Regular live track Depression Is Self-Awareness pops in with its unnervingly chill verse before Gagliardi's screams to "kiiiiiiiill me… I'm broken" claw at eardrums. Last year's double A-Side Jerk and Pot Glasses Thrown Across The Country gets an airing. Nick Angeli is a bass wizard, bouncing on the spot. He jokingly told The Music in an interview last week that this might be a very "revealing" show and, true to his word, about halfway in he loses everything but his instrument and his trucker's cap. 

It all ends the only way it ever could, in a screeching wall of sound so thick that it's a physical sensation before Gagliardi's guitar becomes so many splinters in The Brunny's stage. What a glorious bloody day.