Stinking Lizaveta @ The GRV, 16 Mar

After black metal, cock rock and hardcore, the GRV’s Monday Metal night continues with a mixed bag of doom.

Local openers Jackie Treehorn (****) almost steal the show with their monstrously heavy purple-haze rock, as suave as their namesake and as intricate as a perfectly mixed White Russian.

Vakunoht’s (***) scuzzed-out synth-pop version of the Melvins prove perhaps too weird for the denim-clad audience, though they are wonderfully shambolic.

London’s End of Level Boss (**), suffering from guitars low in the mix, play an odd combination of speed-stoner-rock. Their pastiche of early Metallica and Spinal Tap without the irony wins the crowd over yet lacks the riffs, groove and charisma to warrant many repeat listens.

Stinking Lizaveta (****), however, bring some mutant mix of the best bits of Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix bang up-to-date. Blistering drum pummelling and upright bass monstrosity hold the floor while Yanni Papadopoulos’s guitar alternates between bone-crunching riffs and some exquisite sonic flights of psychedelia, always staying firmly the compelling side of a noodling jam. Their uncontrived formula of detuned doom as played by a jazz trio makes a ferocious racket, banging heads and twisting neurons in equal measure.