GIG: Infest (Bradford)

This was our first visit to Infest, and following the demise of the Resitanz Festival this is obviously something of a magnet for the various freaks, albeit there was only two bands we were interested in seeing. What fortune then that those two bands were playing on the same night and next to each other on the bill!

First up were Accessory, who were really great and rocketed up to third in my gig of the year standings, despite an uncanny ability to play pretty much only tracks from the last two albums but still manage not to play almost all the songs I put on my compilation. Still we did get 'Outrun the Gun' and 'Keen Girl', along with 'Voran', 'I Say Go', 'Shout it Out' and 'She Says it Feels Good'.

After a half an hour spent people watching and trying in vain to buy an Accessory shirt (no XL's left), it was time for Rotersand, and I think it's fair to say they weren't quite we'd been expecting. Singer Rascal Nikov is massively camp, in fact he makes Daniel from Aesthetic Perfection look butch...

They kicked off with a couple of old songs that we don't have, and everything was very subdued, indeed it took a long time, well most of the set really before the band really kicked in, thankfully the arrival of 'War on Error' turned on the stomp and set closers 'Exterminate Annihilate Destroy' (complete with inflatable Dalek) and 'Undone' finally pushed the energy levels up to where they should have been for the whole set.

Rotersand were entertaining, but Accessory crushed them, and that with a weak set list (in our opinion), the defeat could have been even more comprehensive with a few more tracks like 'Squeeze my Heart' on the list.

Mind you, the real entertainment tonight was the audience, we saw everything from CyberGoths, to people dressed in kimonos, to a snow queen, and then there were a couple of transvestites (both of whom where 6ft plus) and then there was the crazy redhead down the front for Rotersand.

She was obviously pissed out of her head (and high maintenance at the best of times I shouldn't wonder) and commandeered the barrier so that she could chuck herself about while simultaneously flirting with her boyfriend. I said to Rose 'She's the sort of girl who will be snogging you one minute and then starting an argument two seconds later'... when, as if on cue, they starting sucking face manically and the next minute she was shouting at him and storming off past us... like I said 'high maintenance'!

As if all this wasn't enough, when we turned to go we were confronted by the sight of a man in a rubber leotard, and that's not something you see everyday, nor indeed should you want to!