Gig Review: Life of Agony - Northumbria University 19/09/17

Newcastle, despite being such a small city, boasts two universities, both of which used to have fine music venues.  Used to.  Newcastle University’s once-fine underground venue is now a homogenised plastic shell, and entering Northumbria Students Union now feels like walking through a PFI-built hospital.  There used to be two venues in here: the smaller theatre-style downstairs venue – now a café – and the upstairs sports hall-like cavern, which is modestly curtained off for tonight’s show.  It’s probably telling that the University’s once-excellent bookshop is now a branch of Santander, but I’m not 100% what it’s telling and won’t get into it here.

Life Of Agony have apparently never played here before.  Despite breaking out of the early 90s New York hardcore scene, LOA have always been more of a metal band.  Like their contemporaries Type O Negative, they threw in big Sabbath-y riffs and introspective gloom along with the occasional punk rhythm on first two albums Rover Runs Red and Ugly.  They evolved more and more into grunge territory with 1997’s Soul Searching Sun before splitting, reforming, splitting again, and then returning with this year’s patchy A Place Where There’s No More Pain.  What set the apart from their own, or any other, scene has always been Mina Caputo’s remarkable voice.  Tortured and vulnerable, but powerful enough to cut through the noise created by guitarist Alan Z, bassist Alan Robert, and drummer Sal Abruscato, it made LOA a more interesting prospect than most metal or hardcore bands of the time.

There are barely any people in the venue as I walk in.  Openers Blood Runs Deep are playing what sounds like the soundtrack to a nightmare.  Progressive, doomy, crushingly heavy and with songs that go on for about a day, they seem to enjoy themselves but probably don’t make many new fans tonight, such is the dearth of early punters.  The venue’s lack of filler material makes clear just how absolutely devoid of soul this place is.  It’s honestly like watching a band in a grim community centre.  The fucking academy is better than this place, and the academy is dogshit.

I’m always wary of bands who call themselves after a member’s name and the Somethings. Unless you happen to be Prince, Slash, or Huey Lewis, you really can’t pull it off. Local band Frankie and the Heartstrings sound like they should be shit, and are.  Even Frank Carter manages to sound like a cunt with The Rattlesnakes. So up next are Aaron Buchanan (no, me neither) and the Cult Classics.  I spent much of their terrible set Googling who the fuck Aaron Buchanan was (he was in Heaven’s Basement, apparently.  I have no idea who they were).  In possession of a powerful voice but using it to belt out turgid, sub-Guns n’ Roses drivel, Buchanan is the worst thing about his own band.  His Freddie Mercury stage moves, embarrassing stage banter, and hilarious silver jacket overpower what would be a tight but forgettable band.  He looks like a matador on a cruise ship and comes across like an absolute bellend.

LOA have attracted some very committed but not terribly numerous fans and the venue is sadly much less than full when they come onstage.  Fortunately, this doesn’t bother them one bit and 27 years of waiting turns into 50 minutes of awesome as they tear through thier back catalogue with style.

Opening with the one-two combo of arguably their best songs in ‘River Runs Red’ and the still-excellent ‘This Time’, they go on to represent every album but are wise enough to lean heavily on the first two.  We get ‘Weeds’ from Soul Searching Sun and ‘Love To Let You Down’ from Broken Valley.  Wisely only dipping a toe into the new stuff, we get pulverising renditions of ‘Lost At 22’, ‘Through and Through’ and ‘Other Side Of The River’.  It’s a crowd pleaser set and the band are enjoying it as much as any of us in the audience.

Joey Z peels out riff after riff while ain songwriter Alan Robert holds it all together on bass.  Caputo is the star of the show, though.  Vocally, moving from piercing baritone to something loser to Layne Staley over the years, she hits every note and musters all the passion you would want to see.  They make jokes about how sparse the crows is, and about firing members of the band.  The diminutive Caputo, shy and reserved at first, suddenly decides that she doesn’t like being onstage in front of so few people and decides to perform 2/3 of the show standing at the security barriers in front of the stage, sharing the mic with adoring fans.  Despite not having written their more heartfelt songs, Caputo delivers with passion, enthusiasm, and a surprising amount of humour.

Despite the low turnout, the band are appreciative and belt out handcore anthem ‘Underground’ before leaving us thoroughly satisfied yet wanting just a few more songs.  We’ve just witnessed one of the more unique bands our beloved genre ever spawned, mixing the punk aggression of hardcore and the bleak, introspective lyricism of grunge.  It’s been a long wait to see them play in our home town, but worth every second.  It may well be a life if agony, but times like this at least offer some glorious respite.

American [Blank]. Two film reviews for the price of one!

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a Cineworld Unlimited card will go and see any old crap at the cinema, just so he feels like he’s getting value for money.  I draw the fucking line at Jane Austen adaptations, by the way.  This year has seen me take in some genuinely great films (Get Out, Baby Driver, Dunkirk) and some absolute dross (King Arthur, The Mummy, Transformers).  At a loose end and with no idea of the quality of either film, I decided to see two consecutive films featuring the word ‘American’ in the title.

Cinema has a complicated recent history with this approach.  Such is America’s vast cultural influence, adding the word to the start of the film carries, for better or worse, some serious weight, either bestowing a superlative quality or suggesting a uniqueness only found in the 50 states. There are some classics (Beauty, Psycho, Movie, Graffiti and - for its time - Pie), most of which run with the unquantifiable uniqueness angle.  There are some decent but forgettable films (Sniper, Gangster, Mary, Hustle), and some which, if I’m being generous, just aren’t up to much (Ultra, Pastoral).  So how would the latest entries, American Assassin and American Made measure up

Assassin is first up.  It tries to be a Jack Bauer/Jason Bourne-like ‘living weapon’ film but suffers from ham-fisted politics (Iran wanting to nuke Israel, etc.) in the plotting, some truly awful dialogue, and logical gaps that make Suicide Squad seem coherent.

Occasional maze runner Dylan O’Brian, miscast but doing his best, plays Mitch Rapp (yes, he’s really called that), a young man whose life is torn apart when his implausibly attractive fiancé is killed by pesky Islamic fundamentalists moments after he’s proposed.  Despite being shot several times himself, he spends the next 18 months not recovering from bullet wounds, but preparing himself to be the titular assassin.  We aren’t told that he has any previous specialist training, but he becomes a skilled MMA fighter, weapons expert, and all round spy in the time it takes most people to plan a wedding.

Trying to infiltrate and kill the terrorist cell responsible for his dead girlfriend, he gets on the CIA radar and is selected for specialist Black Ops training ran by none other than Michael Keaton in the kind of role that former A-listers like him and Kevin Costner get these days (he’s better than this and he knows it, but having the time of his life being hard as fuck).  The CIA’s logic (used sparingly here) is that Rapp’s lack of army training makes him ideal for deep cover as he won’t have to “un-learn bad habits…” and won’t stand out as a boot camp graduate.

What ensues is a globetrotting search for missing weapons-grade nuclear material and Taylor Kitsch who, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, turns out to be a former protégé of Keaton’s and out for revenge.  There are a few scenes of decent enough action, a good fight scene between Kitsch and O’Brian (inventively set on a speedboat so advantages are lost and gained every time it hits a wave), and the whole film has a pleasing no-punches-pulled brutality to it.  Any indications that they were trying to attract a Young Adult audience by casting O’Brian disappear during a scene where fingernails are removed during torture.

That said, the whole thing is very silly, not terribly good, and the key plot point - Rapp’s transition from Very Angry Young Man to American hero - is too much of a leap.  As these films tend to, it makes implausible jumps, dispenses with character motivation where the plot requires.  O’Brian does his best at playing a tortured man overcoming tragedy and does ok with the physical stuff, but ultimately he looks like the member of a boyband who gets all the attention.  The action is just ok, and the plot falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.  Atomic Blonde is much much better at doing the same thing; American here offers no superlative.

Doug Liman, having kick-started the rogue assassin sub-genre with The Bourne Identity and long since abandoned his Indie roots, directs Tom Cruise for the second time in American Made.  Based on the true story of Barry Seal, a former commercial airline pilot recruited by the CIA in the late 70s to spy on revolutionary forces in Central American countries, and then by Pablo Escobar to smuggle cocaine on his return flights, American Made is a fine film.

Cruise plays seal and turns in one of his best, least showy, performances.  Smartly told by Seal in a series of flashbacks on self-recorded VHS tapes, this legitimately allows for an exposition-dealing voiceover to cover the more complex parts of the plot.  Structurally, the film follows the Goodfellas-Wolf Of Wall Street model of huge rise and sudden fall. We see Seal’s life become more and more complex as the CIA expends his operation to include guns and eventually people.  He becomes involved in the notorious Nicaraguan Contra affair, moving troops to be trained in America and weapons in the opposite direction.  Not letting facts get in the way of a good story, Liman sets a good pace and lets the insanity ensue.  He also keeps a light and breezy tone, despite the drama featuring some of the darkest actions in the history of U.S. foreign policy.  For anyone who knows anything about the bloody history of the region this may seem incongruous, distasteful even, but Liman is playing for fun; showing the American way (enterprise, capitalism) as fun, dangerous, but the only way to live.

A shady CIA is personified by Domhnall Gleeson, playing Seal’s handler ‘Schaffer’.  Cocksure when manipulating Seal’s every move but clearly under pressure when back in his office, Gleeson gives another in a string of fine performances.  Caleb Landry Jones does well as Seal’s brainless hick brother-in-law, the cause of most of the problems Seal encounters.  Sarah Wright, as Seal’s wife, er, Seal, does well with a thin part (a little too forgiving, but their family bond is sweet).

Structuring the film around several periods in Seal’s life allows Liman to tell the story in quite a loose manner, with scenes playing out like vignettes rather then connected narrative tissue: Seal’s struggle to take off in a cocaine-loaded plane on a crappy runway is brilliant; his endeavours to stow his money echoes Scorsese at his most playful; his escapes from DEA aeroplanes are fun, OTT moments.

Seal’s fate, whether you know it already or not, is inevitable towards the end of the film.  It could make for a dour ending but Liman doesn’t allow it.  More acknowledgement of legend than melancholy finale, you leave the cinema feeling like you’ve seen something so daft it couldn’t have really happened, but you’ve really enjoyed watching it happen.

And I suppose that’s the real American… meaning here, particularly these days: superlatively silly, and uniquely implausible.  And some examples turn out much better than others.