Stoned Jesus / Mondo Drag / The Abbey @ The Fleece, Bristol, 17th October 2024

I arrived at The Fleece somewhat jangled from the day, and on edge from some non-specific sense of menace in the streets of Bristol. Thoughtfully the staff at the venue were playing dystopian noised-out hip hop just to keep my nerves razor sharp. And seamlessly this segued into eerie organ sounds, as The Abbey took the stage.

This was very much the wildcard on the bill for me, as I’d assumed I knew who they were but was thinking of another band altogether, so stood in idle ignorance waiting to find out what they were about. All tight and cavernous in sound, they seemed to carry either some of their own nerves or else this was a cool and reserved stage presence.

Opener and lead single A Thousand Dead Witches brought some hard rocking power, with a nice shuffle in the rhythm, but from here I found surprisingly little release in their set. I admit this is entirely a subjective judgement, but I don’t get this aesthetic of ‘cultish’ bands who seem nostalgic for all the worst aspects of traditional heavy metal. Presumably, I’m just a misery-guts, as there were plenty who were enjoying it, but for me it was a lot of posturing for not much effect. While I’m not averse to gigs with bands of more than one sub-genre, I couldn’t make sense of this as an opening act for the rest of the bill.

So onwards, to Mondo Drag. This was somehow not a band I’d expected to ever see live, having picked up on their languid psychedelia some time ago, but lost track of in the intervening years. In their absence I had wrongly assumed their set would be purely mellow and stoned bliss, yet they moved with a kind of moody melancholy, slowly grounding nervous energy while digging into a be-grunged downerism. The keyboards were bold, front and centre, leading melodic elements in kraut-ish repetition into sections that simply grooved and boogied.

Drawing on all the psych, Mondo Drag set off in story-telling mode, only to get gone and start a dance. At times this wild ranging appetite verged on feeling disjointed, despite a relatively narrow sound world, but there was always something gleaming around the next bend in the path to keep our eyes fixed ahead. It is difficult with this sort of music to hold an audience, as the songs never hit escape velocity like, say, Earthless, yet Mondo Drag show they most definitely have the chops to pull it off.

And as the venue at last fills right up, Stoned Jesus, with disarming theatricality, dug into a substantial set drawing from most of their catalogue, yes, even including I’m The Mountain introduced with a nod and a wink. Given guitarist and vocalist Igor Sydorenko‘s knowing interactions with the audience, it seems impossible to take the band and their live set as just a gig and out of context. Very much in the room was the impact of past years in Ukraine, and as not distinct from Igor’s reshaping of the band, from what was (at least marketed as) standard Euro neo-stoner into something much more twisty and progressive.

Seeing how he inhabits the songs, it is clear that Stoned Jesus, as it functions, is an extension of his self, although not detracting in any way from the contributions of Andrew Rodin and Yurii Kononov who I believe are the current rhythm section. Perhaps as King Buffalo drew on Covid anxieties to take an unexpected turn and introduce new elements into their sound on The Burden Of Restlessness, Stoned Jesus have worked the heaviness of their times into a development.

Certainly, they still carry off the Colour Haze approach of establishing a motif and digging into it, building a warm heaviness from a melodic base, however, they are willing to push that much harder, into galloping sections that wouldn’t sound amiss from dudes with bullet-belts, or breaking apart into muscular post-punk or indeed the butch intelligence of Tool’s Undertow era.

A strange evening, with an awkward beginning, but in the end an event thanks to a band I never thought I’d get to see, and a band who might never have made it back to the UK.

Scribed by: Harry Holmes