Burnt Out Wreck, Holloway Hell, Bexatron and Sabbata Holloway Strip Jan 25 2020

I thought openers Sabbata had a lot of potential as a funk rock three piece inspired heavily by Glenn Hughes and Hendrix so think falsetto vocals and a big guitar sound. They are passionate and, although on very early, do the best to get the smaller crowd they have to react. There were some lovely passages of searing guitar, but I did think the band seemed a little embryonic and there’s room for them to grow and flourish further.

Holloway Hell were a covers band fronted by Niro of Killit and with Moyano formerly of Trophies of man on drums. Kickin off with ‘Wicked Game’ there’s a lot of high notes and although Niro is primarily known as a guitarist his voice was very clear and had a distinctive tone and was a cut above the average for cover bands. Niro’s guitar style is similar to Slash’s and given that, it’s unsurprising that there’s a few Guns n Roses connected tracks including ‘Back Off Bitch’, ‘Mean Bone’ by Slash and the extremely popular ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by which time the crowd was dancing and hollering for more. The band chose some ambitious songs to cover and made a good job of them and also chose well known songs for maximum crowd appeal seemingly unworried about the extra pressure that would apply. They did great versions of ‘Run to You’, ‘Shoot to Thrill’, ‘Youth Gone Wild’ and ‘Born to Be Wild’. The Aerosmith cover ‘Amazing’ was less successful I thought but Steven Tyler is very hard to do, at least in this context…ahem.. Overall they were entertaining and a great success with the crowd.

Bexatron are more alternative Pop Punk and fronted by blonde bombshell Rebecca Bex who excels at crowd engagement with the flamboyant charismatic Belle on drums. It’s commercial 70s and 80s influenced rock with Bex’s strong high voice over the top. Watching them I thought of Hazel O’Connor and Blondie and the crowd loved it appearing to be familiar with their back catalogue including ‘New York Doll’ and the hilarious ‘Sex, Drugs and Sausage Rolls’ injecting a very British sense of humour into proceedings. Indeed Gregster on guitar reminded me of English 80s glam rock bands like Last of the Teenage Idols, a particularly British strain of Glam Rock in which humour was essential. My favourite in the set, though was the cover of ABBA’s ‘Gimme a Man After Midnight’ rocked up with simply banging drums from Belle who kept people’s attention right to the climax.

Headliners Burnt Out Wreck are now a seasoned live band with two albums worth of fine AC/DC style rock to choose from.  It’s quality songs delivered well and with a bit of history behind them the band now works well as a unified machine and, with lots of black flyin V in the air, the elements of a good visual show too. With more material from the new album than the first now in the set they show justified confidence in their new material, although great songs like ‘Swallow’ and ‘Flames’ from the first album should never be dropped from the set. The highly entertaining ‘Paddywack’ the cream of the new album really gets the crowd going as usual and although the set was supposed to end with the excellent ‘Guitars Electrified’ also from the new album the crowd refused to leave and chanted ‘Rock Ain’t Dead’ (from vocalist Gary Moat’s former band Heavy Pettin) until the band came on and played it. Clearly with a lot of gigs and festivals behind them you can rely on the band to deliver every time and I’ve never seen them do a bad show. With Gary Moat having many songs written which have not been recorded or played yet in his back pocket the band looks to run and run with no sign of stopping!