Having been a fan of Viking Skull’s over the top fun packed take on heavy metal ever since Roddy Stone created the band as a side project to Raging Speedhorn I headed off to Glasgow’s small Barfly venue to check out their new line-up. After some parking issues I arrived part of the way through a set from Dead Beat Carnival, a young local band. They proved promising, in a punky sub-Warrior Soul, kind of way but two things really stood out. Firstly, after complaining recently about how support bands tend not to market their name properly at gigs, here was one whose singer was topless and had the bands’ name written on his chest! The second memorable moment was when that same singer went to the bar mid-set to get a drink leaving his band mates on stage waiting. There maybe a need to work on the organisation side of things guys! 

Next up on were Year Long Disaster, an American band containing ex-members of Third Eye Blind, Karma To Burn and Daniel Davies, the son of Dave Davies of The Kinks on vocals and guitar. They turned out to be a revelation, an absolutely excellent power trio with a huge distorted bass sound up front. Raw yet melodic, powerful vocals and a neat line in 70s style stoner rock.  Year Long Disaster were tight with pounding beats from the back propelling them forward and raw emotion dripping from Davies’ voice and guitar, topped off by that amazing bass sound. Regrettably this same sound is not entirely reproduced on the CD although it's stills a good album. They certainly impressed the audience of 100 or so finishing the set with the epic “Swan On Black Lake”, starting slow and ending with a climactic slew of repeated riffing. Fantastic stuff and definitely a band to look for in the future.

Finally Viking Skull took to the stage, their small hardcore following chanting “Skull Army”, and launched in to their set of fist pumping, clichéd, but hugely fun metal. The Skull were certainly nice and tight and new members, drummer Jess Margera and especially guitarist Julian Cooper handled the occasion with ease. The sound was just right, in the past the band have suffered from playing way too loud, and the audience was definitely up for it.

However, after successfully mixing old and new numbers right up to the classic “Beer, Drugs And Bitches”  with everyone singing along, they somehow managed to lose the crowd a little with the remainder of the set. Cramming in several songs from the new album “Chapter Two” the earlier spark flickered slightly, only perking up for the more familiar “Red Hot Woman” and “Crank It Up”. Luckily by the time set closer “You Can’t Kill Rock And Roll” came along things were back on track only for the evening to end on a disappointing note as the bands failed to return for an encore. Although Roddy had earlier complained that the band were out of shape after having not played live for over two years, a set time of under an hour wasn’t really trying hard enough. All in all though it was a decent performance with more than a few enjoyable moments and, as always Viking Skull have the ability to make you smile but, with a better choice of songs and a longer set, the evening would have been even better.  

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