The Feends; The Dumb Angels
Harbourside
January 12, 1996

It was with infinite sadness that one of Perth's worst bands, The Feends, left this plane of existence last Friday night. By the way, 'worst' is their word, not mine!

The attics and kitchy old wardrobes that Kent and co. crawled out of were sealed for the last time just after the bewitching hour, yet another incarnation of their floating line-up putting the last nail in the coffin, so to speak.

But firstly The Dumb Angels dragged the first set of nails down the blackboard for the assembled minions. Their grinding, girlie screeches blasted out over their straight-up distorted guitars, driven by the brilliant bucket-thumping of a Mr Bowl-cut Rainyard. Sam Feend, Claudine Picasso and EMI Alison prowled and pouted, a veritable supergroup just hitting their instruments hard.

Their simplistic, man-biting spits raised the neck hackles, revisited the legend of a Mr Bobbit and generally made every bloke in the room fear the other half of the population (well, just a little). Great stuff, though the gag may soon wear off if they don't feel particularly nasty one night.

The sexy, ghoulish freekshow that is The Feends has certainly seen some changes: the wigs may be similar but I remember most of the gang being able to string their three chords together. But hey, with a twelve song set list amounting to about 24 minutes of music, the on-stage ensemble only had to know how to wield shaving cream, champaign and fake blood to get a guernsey on this night.

Looming over the slippery, bloodied mess and smashing his tambourine like Thurston Moore the weekend before, Friday the 13th Genge was a leg for Kent to make love to. Nerdy reviewers were wrapped in tinsel and doused in shaving cream on stage. Camera-folk were rumbled by single-fingered keyboard players (which I'm sure it has never been plugged in at a Feends gig).

Quite simply, hardcore demolition and electrical hazard was punctuated only briefly by The Feends' seminally scorchin' tunes, the friends and family of the band guffawing loudly over the shock horror of new Feends initiates. I think they might have even attempted a cover of Tina Arena's Chains, Kent's leopard skin pants possibly addling my interpretation at this stage.

In-jokes aplenty, Wormfarm singalongs on the new vinyl single Jungle Man and waking up with (fake) blood on my pillow - hopefully Sydney is ready for a feendish reincarnation? I'll chill the champers.

Adam Connors

The West Australian is W.A.'s state newspaper. The versions appearing here are the unedited versions which were subsequently edited for space, clarity and reality for publication by editors Sue Yeap and Ara Jansen. Italicised comments in the body of the reviews/interviews - if present - are the notes I sent to the editors to clarify certain situations such as missed deadlines, personal disasters or simple non sequitur, which always makes for good reading.

Search for more Revue articles, reviews and interviews.