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Your guide to gigs, concerts and music festivals in Hong Kong
If there was metal in medieval times, this would be it. There’s something in the relentlessly brutal power chords and drum thumping that calls to mind knights on horses, charging through thickets with jousting sticks and maces. Or maybe that’s only because the heavily-bearded purveyors of this Middle Ages rock – Dave Wong (bass) and Paul Maclean (drums) – look like they’ve just stepped off the set of Camelot. For sure, the title of this debut EP release, Songs of Man and Beast: Chapter One, supports the assertion that this is a base collection of phonics supposed to appeal to the un-evolved, sensually debauched, mead-swilling ne’er-do-wells in all of us. Hear ye, hear ye.
Wong and Maclean have taken gruff steps forward since their days with the now-disbanded Academy, a five-piece known for its rough-edged rock that made strong showings at Rockit festivals of yore. But while the Academy’s dirty rock could hardly be described as subtle, DP take a sledgehammer to the synapses – even when Wong somehow finds a way to snarl the lyrics: “You try to find a way to circumvent my disposition” (from the excellent My Hyena).
The six songs on this EP – available for free download from www.dp-hk.com – are punchy, lo-fi affairs recorded in Maclean’s home studio. The guys are at their best when they resist the urge to temper their two-piece riot with vocals. The opener, Dance, for instance, is a one minute 54 second sprint through chunky bass-land that draws its strength from the pure physicality of the instrumentation; while the deliciously hooky power chords of Eye of the Eagle are slightly let down by moments of thin vocals and weak lyrics (“Far and wide / Like the rising tide / Millions of people refuse to hide”). As a debut, however, this is more than a promising first outing for the standard-bearers of our rock scene. We look forward to chapter two. Hamish McKenzie