Tonight I encountered a sensational show from up and coming Danish band, Bite The Bullet – and goodness me, what a treat!
I had the sincere pleasure of meeting Thomas, Christian and Paw before the show so it was great to get to know them a little before they took to the stage. I’d had their latest album Wheels (2015) and eponymous debut album Bite the Bullet (2013) on repeat for a few days leading up to the gig and loved what I heard so I was pretty excited to see them transform the tracks into a live set.
The venue (Louie Louie, Estepona, Spain) is a rock bar local to me and while searching for rock gigs to delight in this month, Bite The Bullet popped up and took my fancy. It’s a small venue but has everything you need from a rock bar and most of all the feeling that those walls have seen many legendary rock n’ roll nights. As I watched the sound check I was immediately impressed that the sound quality was so good. Loud enough to pack a punch but in no way distorted or painful on my rapidly ageing ears!
Being Spain, where generally speaking people eat their dinner at 10pm and only start to even think about going out from 11pm onwards, I knew it would be a late one.
However, by 11pm the owner decided that we’d be unlikely to get any more takers so they made a start to a somewhat small audience.
I’d been a bit concerned at how the guys would feel playing to so few people, but I needn’t have worried. Good God, Bite The Bullet are born to do this! The way they commanded the stage, spoke to the (albeit bus-stop sized) crowd and utterly rocked the place was sensational. It felt like they could have been playing to 2,000 people not twenty.
Thomas brought us a masterclass in classic rock frontman delivery. Plant and Jagger would have been seriously impressed. Christian on bass together with their ‘on-tour’ drummer cemented the rhythm section tight as glue, giving way to Paw on guitar to take us on a psychedelic dreamy journey into the heart of an old-school 70’s laced fuzz rock haze.
While listening to the Wheels album, tracks that stood out for me were “To The Seaside”, “Go for a Ride” and “My Baby Girl’s Got Soul” – these totally lived up to my expectations when performed live. Given that the album was recorded on an analogue 16-track it was designed to capture that raw, natural, under-produced sound and that was of course reflected in the live show. But as the guys told me, their love is to simply play, keeping it simple with no frills and spills, just the pure essence of their instruments and good old rock n’ roll. Talking of instruments though, it had been a while since I’d seen a Theremin on stage and Thomas put this to excellent use managing to add an eye-catching (and ear-catching) dimension without being gimmicky.
What the crowd lacked in numbers it made up for in appreciation and the bar manager especially was having a good time. This was evident when he interrupted the set to kindly deliver “chupitos” (shots) of Jaegermeister between songs while the band were still on stage.
What we experienced tonight was oodles of talent, vigor, ion, skillful communication and endless classic rock ‘endings’. If they can produce that much energy and unbridled enthusiasm in front of 20 people in Estepona then just imagine what playing in front of 200, 2,000 (or maybe one day) 20,000 would be like. Epic, that’s what, and everyone should experience it.
Bouncy guitarist Paw made sure to bound over to me after the set to ask what I thought. I’ll tell you what I told him: A-MA-ZING! They literally had me grinning from ear to ear.
These guys deserve to do so incredibly well. Check them out via the links below, buy their stuff and look out for them in 2017 when they release a new album and hopefully take to a stage near you.
Pick Wheels up [amazon text=on Amazon as a &asin=B00QUCW8ZC] right now! Link helps this site.
Bite The Bullet: official | facebook | youtube | spotify | soundcloud
