If appearances are anything to go by, then the stage of the Slade Rooms is hotter than a thousand suns. Which, when you think about it, could have been the title of a Von Hertzen Brothers B-side. Singer Mikko looks like he’s been dipped in a well.
“There was a point,” he tells CR later, “Where I was holding the long notes and I thought if I keep singing, I might faint!” To his and his band’s credit, the Von Hertzen Brothers remain upright, their playing as precise as a metronome.
The latest VHB album, New Day Rising, their sixth, is a punchier, more honed proposition than their previous work, still experimental in tone and sound, but with a more linear approach that was only hinted at on their previous Nine Lives album, and evidenced tonight by Flowers And Rust and Coming Home.
The title track, the brusque _You Don’t Know My Name _and the fuzzy The Destitute are the night’s opening calling card, a seamless, three-song sting that nods as much to Biffy Clyro and Muse as they do anything from VHB’s musical past.
Not that it matters, they sit as easily alongside
the jingling Always Been Right as they do the punchy Freedom Fighter; the newer material is clearly just
the sound of a band evolving even as the perspiration spreads as a slick across the wide ceiling and rains endlessly down.
Check out our unplugged session with the Von Hertzen Brothers below…
