New From Tape’s deployment of a sequence is a good news / bad news affair.

Downside first, as the end of song one finds the group embarrassedly smiling as their inanimate fourth member completes its cycle solo, like car owners assuring that the alarm will stop in a minute, honest.

More positively, before synths became stylistically legal again a couple of years ago, NFT would have been just a perfectly competent guit/bass/drums combo.

 

 

 

 

 

Now, though ‘real’ instruments dominate, that extra layer adds a pop-centric dimension perfectly attuned to the singer’s Dave Gahan-echoing voice, all overhanging portentousness, delivered with a thoughtful Stipe-ian scowl.

Rhythmically dynamic and tight, they just need a song or two to permanently scar the memory.

 

“They’re having their make-up done out back,” reveals BristolBands.com’s Kev, tonight’s promoter. By Banksy? Wonders Venue, as six men in orange boiler suits file past.

They are Voice Of The Bomb. Collectively white of face and black of eye, they are also really rather extraordinary.

 

 

 

 

 

First comes an endless writhing beast of a song, essentially an 80s electro-pop troupe being hung from the rafters by a murderous bourbon-swillin’ hard rock band. Soon an ace guitarist standing stage left will send out economical Manzanera-like solos over a track about to turn into Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’ arranged by the producer of ‘Hello Dolly’.

 

 

Immaculately rehearsed, VOTB are not simply over the top: they are over the top, up the M4, and lading on a stage in Drury Lane.

Precision-drilled and primary coloured, at their heart these are show tunes, albeit done up in a variety of wrong-footing disguises: rubbery funk, industrial rock, cheesy synth, with a repeatedly Ol é -ing singer somehow removing his tongue far enough from his cheek to reveal a genuinely string voice. They are spiritual heirs to The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, and deserving of a very long run indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review: Julian Owen (Venue Magazine)