Rolo Tomassi’s Halloween Rescue Rooms show was a late one, with doors not opening until 8 PM, and the band themselves not gracing the stage until 10:45 PM, however the late hour did not dampen the energy of the band or the crowd, who had mostly embraced the Halloween spirit, with the entire band decked out in corpse paint, and guitarist Chris Cayford in a ‘Yodelling Kid’ Mason Ramsay t-shirt. They opened with “Rituals” from their latest album ‘Time Will Die and Love Will Bury It’, and 12 songs out of the 15 song set list was taken from either that album or its predecessor ‘Grievances’, which have both been their most highly acclaimed pieces of works and held up here in a live environment.
From the very start their signature contrast between Eva Spence’s sweet singing and her brutal screams (backed up by brother and keyboardist/alternate vocalist James Spence) set the tone for the evening, as even during slow sections there was still an underlying sense of vitality just waiting to be unleashed, and the crowd responded in kind, with pits throughout. They are also a band who truly know how to put on a show, with very little interaction with the crowd throughout, preferring to let their music do the talking – except for acknowledging Nottingham as one of their favourite cities to play and promising to return soon – which was supported by their stage set of four giant lights which lent themselves excellently to the ethereal ambiance of their music.
This band are one of the true genre-defying underground talents and on their biggest tour to date there is now a sense that they could truly go anywhere from here, and I am excited to see how they evolve next and how their unique sense of ethereal atmosphere will sound in the even bigger venues which they are surely destined to play sooner rather than later.
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