Hookworms – Nottingham Rescue Rooms – live review

ookDSC03113Hookworms – Virginia Wings – Nottingham Rescue Rooms – 22nd March 2015

Fighting Boredom continue to post up old reviews of gigs we think deserve airing again, this time around, Hookworms from 2015, Adrian Bloxham wrote the review, all photo’s were taken by Martin Ward.

Parking is an absolute bloody nightmare, going round in circles and three point turns until we find a space while being menaced with hard stares from driver and passenger of a minibus. The Rescue Rooms hall is mostly empty when we arrive, painted black and feeling cold, everybody is in the bar or sat outside waiting.

There’s a palpable sense of anticipation around the building, someone asks for tickets just in front of us and are told that there are two left. Not surprising really, The Hum is an excellent album and Hookworms reputation is growing.

First on are Virginia Wings, an odd looking band, a cool as .. bowl haircut, a stripy jumper / beany hat combo which wouldn’t look amiss aboard a fishing boat, a geeky looking drummer  and a cool front woman in a black dress with sixties pop hair. The music they make is a soundscape of synths and guitar. It takes me back to listening to Saint Etienne and the like, but it doesn’t sound dated, just disconnected. The vocal is quite often just noises and phrases which sit well inside the music. It’s a powerful indie based sound, repetitive but I think that’s the point.

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Hookworms start with a throbbing hum, apt really, you would expect nothing less. The guitars, bass and drums lock into a brutally raw power rhythm that is just screaming for release. The noise builds the anticipation until the synth breaks, vocals rage and the noise just goes. It locks in and the sheer raw emotion and madness of it grabs you by the throat and you are lost.

The static and white noise rolls around the hall and the vocal, with so many effects it sounds like something escaped from an asylum, echoes through your head. Even when the noise slows down to a drone, I hesitate to say ‘softens’ because it really doesn’t, there is still a wild intensity and barely repressed aggression making you uneasy and itching for a release.

It feels like the moments in the music you love when everything moves into place. Like when the Asheton brothers locked into the groove behind Iggy, leaving him the space to freak completely, it’s that tight, that cool. It’s that hardcore. Hookworms look like they have left us behind, eyes shut and heads down they drive the noise higher and higher until they are gone. Only that groove echoing in your head and the hum vibrating your teeth remains.


Hookworms’ website is parasiticnematode.blogspot.co.uk, they are on Facebook and Twitter.

All words by Adrian Bloxham, all pictures by Martin Ward.

Adrian Bloxham

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