The street opposite the Old Kings Head in Islington is bathed in a malevolent shade of green. It's not the sort of green you can clean up after a rewarding night deep-throating Kiwi Lemon MD 20/20. Or indeed the peculiar shade you saw when aliens abducted you for the last dregs of your Absinthe, before conveniently
dropping you on your steps the next morning with a splitting hangover.
No,it's the evening glow of the neon sign for nearby pub The Holloway, a sign so offensively luminous that it's officially classified as a psychological variant of napalm. Having barely kept my lungs in my throat as I made my way through the door, I was ready to appreciate anything that would massage the reef knots in my throbbing brain.
Which meant beer. And rock. The beer would have to come first, because two of the four bands on show had cancelled. Junkster and Sweet Seduction had either got lost, got sick, or got zapped by the green glow like extras on a Star Trek mission. In the resulting silence, I boldly went for a Budvar.
The Old Kings Head is a traditional pub with a gothic make-over, the pub equivalent of dressing your grandmother up like Alice Cooper. But this grandma unquestionably rocks, from the Hellraiser and Jenna Jameson figurines leering from the walls and the bar to the dark murals of cackling clowns and ill-fated Australian crocodile hunters.
In the centre of this crafted rock haven, the electronic hum of Star Scream bubbled forth. The Hastings three-piece has more digital backing than you'd normally expect from a rock act, but they're hardly miming Ashlee Simpson types. There's a masterful technical precision to the timing of this virtuoso electro-rock onslaught, reminiscent of the era when Marilyn Manson went all glam with Mechanical Animals.
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For every computerised bleep or beat from the back, there's a swirl of operatic guitar activity, an aggressive volley of bass thumps to the skull, or a jagged clatter of drums hailing back to the days when everyone's favourite muppet Animal couldn't kick the uppers.
The light-up guitars, the corsets and the spectacular rock hair may win fans on stage, but you can't lay them down on a record. And while the band may take an hour to dress each day, you can bet they spend the other 23 waist-deep in their spiky, striking music. Star Scream may never rule the charts, but they should be
launching a bloody coup on your CD collection soon.
Next up, The Gorgeous Girls took a wildly different approach. The headline act are so unashamedly hair metal that they should have performed their set while crawling on the bonnet of a Cadillac, surrounded by centrefolds in swimsuits.
But if The Darkness can fill the airwaves with classic rock, The Gorgeous Girls can certainly fill a pub with it. And so they did, armed with Axl Rose headbands, blonde locks and bare chests, blowing up the room's bouncy castle with a rebel yell of hits like Born to be Wild. And for a while, those hairy dancers forgot about the aliens that awaited them outside, armed with green phasers and crushing headaches…
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