In these days of corporate sponsorship and disposable 'Pop Icons', the very idea of a rock'n'roll band travelling for 14 hours solid (via ferry and motorway) to play a club in a rural backwoods such as Leap in West Cork to a small audience mostly unfamiliar with them seems unthinkable.
That in itself seems a big-hearted result, but the fact that they proceed to drive those same unsuspecting punters crazy with a torrential downpour of white-hot garage punk rock'n'soul seems nigh on miraculous. But then Manchester's GOLD BLADE are no ordinary bunch of rock'n'roll warriors: they've got real pedigree in that wired-to-the-moon frontman John Robb and bassist Keith Curtis both have lengthy underground rock track records leading back to the early '80s (with The Membranes and A Witness respectively) and the eight years or so they've spent with this thunderous outfit ensures their mission to spread the testifyin' rock'n'roll gospel to even the remotest parts is an unmissable event.
Connolly's is left largely unimpressed by the ragged, but latterly rousing set turned in by support act Rulers Of The Planet, but it's not a problem for Brother John and co. Early tunes like "Who Was The Killa?" are dispatched with vicious accuracy and by the time t'Blade kick into the gleefully dumb "Kiss My Ass" John's shirt is long discarded and he's joined by a baying throng at the front, dying to share microphone space and howling along to the so-simple-they're-genius lyrics.
Aesthetically, Gold Blade are a lean, mean fighting machine, with their sharply bequiffed looks cutting a serious dash and their churning, riffsmart sound a glorious amalgam of Nation Of Ulysses, the MC5 and The Clash. John's immortal stage patter soon has us eating out of his hands, too. A brilliant mix of self-deprecation ("Hey, you can move forward you know - we don't bite!" ), healthy cynicism ("Wow! I thought this was just a gig at a small rural club, I didn't realise it was a stadium!") and surreality ("Anyone here from Crumpsall?"), it's a winning formula and one we're willing to lap up, especially when the likes of groin-kneeing bruisers like "16 Tons" follow merrily in the wake.
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Such is the intensity of the barrage, song titles become little more than a blur, though the home strait remains indelibly branded on the remains of your reviewer's mind as the band whip out "Black Elvis" and "Hail The People" to the oilslick of pogoing limbs that's advancing ever closer to the stage.
After that, any hope the band had of leaving without a string of encores is torn asunder. "That's all we know after eight years," grins John as Brother Rob's cymbals threaten to split at the end of "Hail The People", but they're soon smashing into "Kiss My Ass" again with John leaping around like Iggy Pop after a vanload of jumping beans and the band leading him into several more prime selections of "Nuggets"-defying mayhem before everybody finally gets to call it a night drenched in sweat and smoke. Whatever inhibitions anyone might have been harbouring when they entered tonight have long since evaporated and we leave grinning like loons and smug in the knowledge that a better Halloween Party would be impossible to find.
Approaching ten years down the line, lesser bands might be frustrated at their continuing cult status, but as their brilliantly bizarre appearance on Irish TV kids' show 'S@ttitude' the following morning proves, Gold Blade are stars whenever they get within spitting distance of any stage you like. We'll leave the last word to Brother John, howling "Who Was The Killa?'"s chorus: "Sometimes I feel pretty wild, music it makes me ALIVE!"
Where Gold Blade are concerned, anything less is unacceptable.
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