As I queue for Clown Core's Brisbane concert as part of their We Are Never Coming Back tour, I find myself standing among a suspicious mix of neckbeards, band nerds, cybergrind cryptids, and a bloke in a shiny gold pimp suit; and quite a few. . . you guessed it, clowns. I didn't get the memo.
Inside The Triffid hangar (4 June), I'm sad to find no porta-loo front and centre, lit like a crime scene like I've seen in videos. Instead, there's a huge drum riser with two workstations for our two clowns.The air smells like beer, Jack Daniels, Lynx Africa, and anticipation. The smoke machine's pumping, the house lights dipped low staining our skin dirty blue. The sell-out crowd are slowly trickling in, but they're already frothing for the chaos about to be unleashed.
The support act is DJ Driver, who stands behind his simplistic desk to lay his plugged-in phone on. He stands for a bit. Leaves the stage. Returns and then sits on a chair beside it, listening to his dark rave tones, drinking us all in without a word.
DJ Driver - image © Clea-marie Thorne
His noise tracks are a welcome reprieve from the ocean waves that were playing for half an hour before. I thought I might want to drown myself. . . While dialling in the instrumentals from his iPhone, DJ Driver calls on three young women in clown makeup from the crowd to join him on the stage in some kind of chaotic rave ritual with food.
He gets selfies taken with them and has them handing out fluro pipe cleaners to punters, which end up twisted into ponytails, beards, ears, hats – you name it – and glitter stars to stick on our faces. I scored a star and a hi-vis pipe cleaner love heart woven into my hairband. Near the end of his set, DJ Driver surfs the crowd – now he ain't little, but the crowd have him!
At all other times he's been surveying us without saying a word, sipping beers and letting his device do the talking (mostly telling us to shut up) and letting the three lady clowns bejewel him with their glittery stick-ons and gifted him a pipe cleaner ring. It's weird. It's wonderful. It's just the right amount of unhinged.
DJ Driver - image © Clea-marie Thorne
The moment arrives. The two stars of tonight's show take their places. They stand. They stare. We laugh. They still make no motion. FINALLY! It's on.
Feeling like we are listening to a death clown funeral band on bath salts, Louis Cole (drums, vocals, synth) – yeah, the genius behind Knower – hammering out syncopated insanity, throwing in blast beats like jazz drummers do backflips.
Meanwhile, the mystery saxman (anonymous but possibly part warlock) honks and wails like a possessed John Zorn shoved into a meat mincer. Saxophone blasts slice through the room like a banshee's last scream caught in its throat. During 'Flat Earth', the bass drops low enough to medically rearrange my intestines.
The visuals behind Clown Core flicker between low-res meat planets and what could be pornographic Bunnings commercials; did someone slipped a tab into my Red Bull?! My brain doesn't know whether to laugh, wince, or detach from reality. So it does all three.
Clown Core - image © Clea-marie Thorne
We then get a track that's less of a track and more of a slow-motion mental breakdown with a saxophone as its narrator. The lighting's all pukey and cloudy like it might be something hazardous to our health. Feels like I'm wake-dreaming in an apocalyptic fever swamp.
The music keeps coming in fits and starts and strobe-like lighting. It's like ambient doom flipping into full-body jazzcore seizures. Heads spinning. Someone's crying, possibly from joy. My mind is now really melting.
Overlapping rhythms fold in on themselves like Meshuggah trapped in a Rubik's Cube. Cole's drumming—f...! Just f...! So tight it's obscene. The drummer's polyrhythmic syncopation is scandalous. Take a bow.
Clown Core - image © Clea-marie Thorne
By the 20-minute mark, everyone's stopped trying to make sense and just drinking in the chaos. The SoCal porta-loo makes an appearance on the digital backdrop, as does a solar-flaring wormhole that might be swallowing our collective sanity. Synths are gurgling like a Commodore 64 being drowned in Mountain Dew.
The sax climbing, climbing – then dropping, which is just bonkers. That sax? It's jazz-metal sex. No debate. Did I mention the monstrosity of lewd acts and naked sex bits morphing and flash-clipping on the screen behind them? Well. I just did. It's like AI went rogue conglomerating porn movies where anything goes and anything goes anywhere!
The crowd turns to laughing at copulating animals – outdoor sex exhibitionists playing out on the screen before us. We wonder and wonder why, some more. I told you I have a bit to catch up on, but it is why I am here.
Standing there, again, masked faces. Blackness blinking. Still just standing there. It's almost a little unnerving and could well be causing some fans to experience coulrophobia for the very first time.
Clown Core - image © Clea-marie Thorne
'Reviews' drops and someone behind me screams "five stars!" and Cole and Saxman turn their backs to us to watch the reviews about them – ripples of laughter breaking out as we catch snippets of overanalysed reactions and awkward YouTubers on the big screen.
The mosh pit is exploding, but in a chill kind of way. A chick surfs solo to the front, bursts from the barrier to bolt back into the mosh. Now I know I am short, but she is the only one I've seen do the surf besides DJ Driver.
Saxman is smashing the keys, and some crazy fan on his side of the stage is waving what could be either a long green sausage dog balloon animal or possibly a cock and balls dildo. Can't confirm. Don't want to. Perhaps 'Bologna Penis' could be the reason for the latter?!
Clown Core - image © Clea-marie Thorne
'Pizza Party' brings out the cowbell and synth pad mayhem. I'm pretty sure 'Toilet' made an appearance somewhere tonight. Can I just say jazz sax in metal isn't a suggestion; it's now a demand. Dude's been performing a jazz exorcism for sure. Then it's the 'End', but is it?
We wait for an encore. It comes quickly. I think it's 'Hell'. Anyway, if it's not, forgive me – but the chaos was real and my brain had already leaked out of my ears by that point. If you want accuracy, maybe ask the sausage dog. What I can say is the crowd are losing the last of their collective minds for it. Feels like the portal to another universe is opening.
Then: silence and darkness again. 'Thank you for your money. Please leave.' flashes up on the screen, giving us more giggles. A crowd that clearly wanted more is now pouring out and hoping the tour name was only a tease. Because they'll sell-out again, I guarantee it!
Clown Core - image © Clea-marie Thorne
I too make my exit slightly deaf and with my rib cage still shaking from the intensity of the bottom end. Emotions feel violated in the best way possible.
Clown Core is a brilliant musical monstrosity. Somewhere between Meshuggah (as mentioned before), Tim & Eric, John Coltrane, and a meth-fuelled rave at Clown Town. A fever dream of cybergrind jazz, toilet-core absurdity and avant-garde doom – but underneath the masks, there's serious musicianship.
For the uninitiated, Clown Core's vibe is like Saxman Sam Gendel (so I'm told) and Louis Cole got sick of reality and decided to make music for the apocalypse.
More photos from the concert.
