The second BETH BLADE & THE BEAUTIFUL DISASTERS plugged in and the first chord was struck, the air became heavy, sweltered, lethal. You could smell it: perfume and sweat, fear and something else, something abrasive, like ozone before thunder. The room reconfigured itself. We were not in a bar. We were in a cathedral worshipping the Gods of Rock n Roll and feeling very unworthy. If the true king of Rock & Roll himself, Mr John Craven, had made an appearance, I fear I would’ve spontaneously combusted.
Beth strode to the mic looking somewhere between sinner and saint. Her guitar hung low like a knife poised to spill blood. The first shriek was an open wound in the evening. The other riffs were jolts and shudders, the kind that twist your belly around and kick your pulse against the ribcage. She was laying down songs for their new album, "Vintage Rebel x Trauma Bond", an album that's thick with the smell of lust in a snare trap. Her voice was gasoline and fire, a voice that didn't just brush up against flesh, it rippled beneath it, nestled comfortably inside the veins, made all the nerves feel used and vulnerable.
The Beautiful Disasters trailed after her in lewd precision. The bass swooshed from torso to torso, pushing hips into motion, forcing strangers into one another as if they were old friends to start. Guitar solos wafted across the space like tendrils of smoke on a single cigarette, curling around the edges, sweetness one second, savage the next. Drums were relentless and almost primal with a rhythm that made you remember when you last were held tight enough to bruise.
Between scream and solo, a mole appeared from under the stage. A dazed, bewildered little creature that, apparently, hadn't been spotted for thirty-six years. It blinked twice, blew out its nose at the beer-laden air thick with pheromones and feedback, then disappeared back into wherever it had emerged. It appeared to decide that this wasn't a home for the living. Nobody saw if it was there. Nobody cared. [Editor: We're Going To Have PETA Activists After Us Now...Great]
The room was feral, a fevered ocean of open mouths and outstretched arms in the front row. Sweat bucketed like baptism, glitter dissolved into skin. Bodies pressed so tightly together you could feel each breath, every shiver of desire kindled by a downstroke or a scream. A girl at the perimeter of the stage mouthed along with every line like a prayer, mascara running into her smile. A guy sitting beside her was on the edge of toppling over, his hand across his chest as if he was trying to hold the song in.
By the time the encores hit the air, the cathedral had reformed. Flags dangled from unseen rafters, Marshall stacks were like altars. Fireworks detonated in spectral colour beyond our gaze and spelled out "BETH", written in some private heaven we'd all agreed to believe.
Her guitar was now slick, shiny, lethal, and, with the final wail, she baptized us, not in water but light, sweat, and spit (Maybe even snot, Beth did have a cold). The crowd disintegrated. Some kissed like they'd never known light before. Some got on their knees. Some just stood still, trembling, afraid of what they let go. It was sex, it was surrender, it was music.
As the last note dissolved, the air cracked like glass. And there, in the silence after the storm, the mole reappeared, blackened, blinking, with a guitar chord trailing behind it like a love letter that it could not understand. It paused, it sneezed, and vanished into a wineglass.
BETH BLADE & THE BEAUTIFUL DISASTERS are not a band. They are hunger. They are risk.
They're the holy war on four chords and a scream. Words: Matt Denny.
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