On record, Osaka Punch is a pop-metal-bastard-fun-daughter. I admire the concept of a band loyal to neither genre, awesome at both and not giving a f....
So how to begin live? A 'Baywatch' theme? Does everyone remember 'Baywatch'? The red, swim-suit clad weekly array of gLAmazon life-ladies cheekily (all six of them) saving lives wherever they went. And a cock-rock piano-glazed theme to go with it. And there they are, Osaka punching along to it. Air guitars, vocals and shit. Ok, so we’re on that page? Cool. You had me at Pamela.
Their first tune has Fun Loving Criminals smirks over piano riffs, and the 'don't give-a-f*ck-o-meter' is in the red. Is it a metal band fronted by a Backstreet Boy? Kinda. And ye know... I want it that way! I’m also hearing Mike Patton vs Chris Cornell. Steely Dan interludes even? “I want a house, two kids and a car.” Or indeed “Caaaa'”. We are in Australia.
I can see these guys as the Saturday Splendour main stage 5pm, ye know, a good mid-fest sunset sweat workout. Earn your beers goddamnit. Then of course, another influence jumps out. Mastadon, don’t talk watch! Their drummer deserves his own paragraph here. Like Mastadon’s, he pulls off these impossible fills-landing phrases that make you giggle with their perfection. With matching axes. Some of the drum fills sound like a load of Swans and Bulldogs simultaneously getting emptied out the back of a lorry.
And then, another cover? Sure f*ck it, why not? 'Ghostbusters'! Really lads? But then it happens. The half-time metalness: “I ain't ‘fraid of no ghost.” It really works. Basically, the only thing happier on earth than us Townie kids (1 October) are all the Bulldog fans losing their shit on the re-run on telly.
The naughty Richter scale needles are climaxing. And the worthy soundtrack? Osaka Punch motherfucker!
