Blind Drunk Aggression

I have a kind of bucket list of bands I want to see live. At the top of this list for many years was the British thrash band, Acid Reign.

Acid Reign were a very important band to me in my mid-teens and always bring back happy memories. Listening to The Worst of... in my mate’s car on his dodgy tape player with one speaker whilst bunking off from sixth form college, listening to the Humanoia single whilst getting hammered on cheap scotch in my bedroom with friends at around the time of my 18^th birthday, and attempting to play Big White Teeth on guitar in another mate’s attic as he “drummed” along on two biscuit tins are some of the lowlights.

The band split up in the early 90s and I never got to see them live.

But then, like a phoenix from the sea, they resurfaced. Acid Reign 2.0 was just the singer H and some other blokes as far as I was concerned at the time, but then they released a couple of new songs and revealed that actually, this was probably the strongest line-up Acid Reign had ever had. Kerrang were still wrong to call them a “stepping stone to bands like Cathedral and Lawnmower Deth” though.

The new and improved band had been doing a few dates here and there, but I was never able to go for a number of reasons – mostly laziness, I would imagine.

This changed following a chance meeting with H in a pub in London before a Descendents show in July. He told me about the colossal three-date Tour of the North that was to occur in December, one of the shows being scheduled for the legendary Brudenell Social Club in Leeds.

I wasn’t going to pass this up and having been told I “didn’t even make the top 10 of most pissed Acid Reign fans who’ve ever accosted me” by H, I set about getting the pissedest I’ve ever been before staggering into the venue at 6:15pm on a freezing cold Sunday.

I won’t bore you with my review of two more than adequate bands whose names escape me now who were actually very good but hardly anyone watched. I won’t tell you how good Reanimator were either because I heard them rather than saw them due to a lengthy discussion with an interesting Irish socialist in the smoking shelter.

By the time Acid Reign took to the stage at what felt like midnight, but was more likely around 9:30, I was incredibly sozzled. Having just bought a new bottle of beer I decided that entering the moshpit the second the first drum beat of Goddess blasted out to be a fantastic idea.

Within seconds I was wearing most of my drink and was happily charging around and barging into complete strangers, all of whom were grinning as much as I was. I ended up on the floor a few times, but it was all good fun.

The setlist was a colossal blur, mostly due to dangerously high alcohol levels, but I have vague recollections of Creative Restraint, Two Minded Takeover and a damn fine cover of Suzanne Vega’s Blood Makes Noise being included along the way.

There was a guy in the moshpit who was wearing a huge yellow puffa jacket which prompted H to quip “fucking hell, who let you out of the airing cupboard?”

By the final song, Motherly Love, I was bruised and battered and was sweating through three levels of clothing like Tony Slattery on Whose Line Is it Anyway? And yes, I was abysmally shitfaced. I was also told that I needed to get some new cultural references, but that’s a whole different thing altogether.

Once it was over there were lots of handshakes and bro-hugs with my fellow moshpitters and we hung around a bit to chat with the band. There was a shot of some weird shit with a lizard in a bottle and I’m reasonably sure I talked a lot of absolute bollocks. And did H take a photo of my apple core tattoo? I think so.

If 16-year-old me had been there, he would probably have high-fived me as I’m pretty sure it’s the only thing I’ve ever done in my life of which he would have approved. But he would probably still have just thought I was a cunt anyway.

Obligatory t-shirt purchased, it was off back to the hotel with almost-broken ribs and some potential light internal bleeding.

What a night.