Transmit – Fighting With Wire, Hornets, Stillpoint

By Leigh Forgie

Pure Savage’s weekly musical showcase is made even more special tonight thanks to two incredibly talented hard rock bands and a somewhat unexpected announcement by headliners Fighting With Wire.

“It would be quite good if everyone could move up front and hold hands. Let’s show a bit of solidarity,” remarks Stillpoint guitarist and vocalist Dave McKendry, quoting a famous song amongst Northern Irish music fans in order bring the crowd together. What follows is a rather short, but by all means alluringly loud set from Stillpoint that seems to be exactly the wakeup call needed to rally the punters around the stage.

“If you know the chorus, scream it as loud as you can! If you don’t then you can all go and fuck for all I care,” shouts McKendry introducing the song “I Know What a Monster Looks Like”, a surprisingly slower song from the band’s catalogue of usually fiery rock anthems. The crowd isn’t quite ready to indulge the band at this point, but given that this song seems to turn quite a few heads Stillpoint seem to have successfully gained the attention of this Limelight audience.

Surprisingly loud and energetic, thrash punk band Hornets power through their first few songs at breakneck speed, without so much as pausing for a breath, instead channelling their energy to give one hell of an on-stage performance.

What makes this phenomenal performance even more intriguing is the news that the band has just returned from “fucking up 100 dudes at a Bronx gig” in Manchester.

Bassist Sib challenges the punters hovering in the background or at the bar by boasting that the band had just arrived back in Belfast at 8am that morning, meaning that no excuses will be accepted for everyone not to get involved. Thankfully, during the highlight of the band’s set “Mission”, much of the crowd are happy to oblige.

Fighting With Wire’s opening three songs are rather underwhelming. Frontman Cahir O’Doherty seems to be holding back in both the vocal and guitar department during recent tracks such as “Didn’t Wanna Come Back Home” and “Colonel Blood.”

Later revelations could probably explain why, but it takes one of the band’s most infamous hits “Everybody Needs a Nemesis” to really get the crowd excited about seeing the rare treat of these guys in action.

Cahir finally lets loose during the screaming schizophrenic vocals of “Waiting on a Way to Believe” and from then on the band truly sound like the alternative rock band they always promised to be, complete with disjointed guitar solos and throat-tearing screams, powering through a selection of songs from both albums spanning their ten year career.

As the gig enters its final act, Cahir surprises the crowd with the announcement that this would be Fighting With Wire’s last show in Belfast.

Despite being met with boos and jeers, the band aren’t willing to leave the stage without a fight and treat the crowd to a selection of songs that don’t normally make the cut on a FWW set list. It’s a mix of fan favourites from both albums with angsty heartbreak anthem “Erase You” and early hit single “Sugar” (despite being one of the band’s least favourite tracks) being highlights of the night.

Ending their show on a nostalgic note, FWW’s career comes full circle with their final song of the night “Cut the Transmission”, cited as the first song the band ever wrote. It seems like a fitting finale for the Derry three-piece and for once the obligatory “one more tune” chants sounds less like a drunken gig tradition and more of a call of desperation to hear one of Northern Ireland’s biggest bands play for one last time.

Fighting With Wire, Hornets and Stillpoint played Transmit on February 20 2013.

Photo by Dave Burns