The crunch of Angus Young's 'Highway To Hell' riff filled the dark inside of Brisbane's The Brightside (4 December). Only the riff; no other instrument from AC/DC's iconic song joining in.
The crowd waited for Phil Rudd's drums to kick in, but they never came. Instead, that riff repeated; and repeated; and repeated.The combination of the repeating riff, the empty space left by the lack of other instruments, and the wait for English band Fat White Family to arrive turned tension into an act of torture.
It's an act that is expected of the provocative rockers, having a history of pushing boundaries in everything from their music to their everyday lives – from drug scores to odes to circumcision.
In Adelle Stripe's great 2022 book about the band, 'Ten Thousand Apologies: Fat White Family And The Miracle Of Failure', she describes them as 'a drug band with a rock problem'.
However, since forming in 2011, the band have managed to pull themselves together and release four excellent albums of experimental and uncompromising rock. Their latest is 'Forgiveness Is Yours', their first since 2019's 'Serfs Up!'.
Their return to Australia is also their first since 2019, leading to Brisbane fans persevering the sonic hell of the repeating 'Highway To Hell' riff. Finally, it stopped, and the first sight of the band is member Alex White, wearing only a jockstrap and beret, and his saxophone hanging over his shoulder – another surprise before a note has been played.
Before the headliner's set of nightmarish discord, the crowd were treated to the dreamy shoegaze of RINSE. The band is fronted by Joe Agius, formerly of Brisbane band The Creases.
Since that band's break-up, Joe has been working on wife Harriette Pilbeam's project, Hatchie. After a move to Melbourne, Joe is back at the front of the stage, and hasn't lost any of his frontman chops in the intervening years.
Most of the set came from their latest EP, 'Starfish*', adding the icy, melancholic grooves of New Order to their swirls of distorted guitar. Gripping his mic like Liam Gallagher, Joe sighed over the sonic dreamscapes, sent high beyond the clouds by the booming drums of Richie Daniell.
"You can stop that sh.t," Fat White Family frontman Lias Saoudi commanded the sound desk. The joke of the repeating 'Highway To Hell' riff was over, but proceedings weren't getting serious any time soon as Lias stood centre-stage wearing flesh-coloured overalls.
If the band's entrance music was torture, opening song 'Wet Hot Beef' would soundtrack the resulting mental breakdown. The six-piece played the nightmarish skronk, chanting the title in monotone unison. Only Lias' chant was expressive, growing manic as he began screaming and barking, tensing his shoulders and contorting his face.
As drummer Guilherme Fells held down the post-punk grooves, the rest of the band carried on their antics. Guitarists Adam J Harmer and Nathan Saoudi would interrupt twanging licks with noise terror, shoving guitars into amps and swinging from their straps.
At the centre, Lias snidely bantered, bartering with a fan named Casper and dedicating new track 'Religion For One' to 'late-stage Nick Cave's hair transplants'. During performances, he was a sight to behold. Reaching into the crotch of his overalls, he pulled out a doughnut and ate it.
Meanwhile, 'Is It Raining In Your Mouth?' saw Lias spend most of the song in the audience, barging his shoulder into fans and marching through them. A stagehand fed Lias' mic cable through the crowd like a fisherman, but upon stopping he collapsed to the floor, convulsing and screaming into the mic.
"Were you on the floor searching for ketamine?" asked Adam Harmer. With two songs to go, Nathan tried to find a break to get to the bathroom. "Just hold it!" Lias ordered. Holding his bladder, the band launched into the groove of 'The Whitest Boy On The Beach', an undeniable hit amongst the crowd hypnotised by its rhythm.
Finally, Nathan couldn't hold it any longer. Dropping his guitar, he raced across the stage and out the door to backstage. Lias announced the end of the show and left. The rest of the band were left on stage, confused at the sudden ending.
"We came all this way, we might as well finish," a defiant Alex announced. He began an applause for an encore. His bladder now emptied, Nathan returned with Lias, and the band closed with the garage rocker 'Bomb Disneyland'.
For a band that could implode any minute, it's a strangely triumphant finish for Fat White Family's chaotic set. They battled against their own self-destructive instincts and conquered them for the night.
However, whether they hold together or fall apart, a Fat White Family set is guaranteed to be an unpredictable, edge-of-your-seat ride into chaos.
