Sea Bastard formed in 2011 and managed to keep going for several years before taking a short break. We were pleased to see that they had decided to reform and were starting to play gigs again this year. As they weren’t around last year, they had their anniversary in the 11th year instead, on Halloween weekend. The line up proved interesting, with two experienced musicians combining to form Blood Wolf Moon who opened proceedings and Dan Kinsey’s punk band rather than his sludge band as originally intended.
Blood Wolf Moon are a duo formed of members of Rameses (keyboards, guitar and vox) and 11 Paranoias (drums). Theirs was a doom set with Black Metal, goth and industrial elements thrown in and proved a good start to the evening.
Second on were Haest, who, on paper at least, seemed an unusual choice, however, it worked well and got the audience warmed up. As it was Halloween they joined in with the dressing up, with drummer Dan’s face covered with corpsepaint, their bassist sporting a shocking wig, guitarist Dan wearing some ridiculous shorts and the vocalist wearing a strange shirt.
Finally Sea Bastard came on and played a few numbers – their songs are quite long. Singer Monty was dressed as a wizard and the other three were wearing corpsepaint. The doom crowd was out in force and enjoyed the set. At one point a dinosaur invaded the stage, to be dragged off by an embarrassed friend. As the set came to a close, Oli handed his guitar over to Sam, who has drummed with the band, who “played” it Hendrix style behind his head.