Millionaire

I wish sound engineers would grow up!

...the hecklers are buried somewhere beneath the deafening bass, buzzing like a billion bees against the disco backdrop of synthy stuff. “I know that you like to hate me!” screams frontman Tim Vanhamel, once part of the mighty dEUS. Support bands always get this treatment, crap sound, crap lights and crap crowd response. Support tonight, Millionaire are by no means a crap band. Far from it. The album 'Outside the Simian Flock' has some ace moments. But it's all not quite there. Yeah, it is a bit weird mixing Prince via fellow-Belgians Soulwax quirky disco-pop grooves with snotty slabs of sludgey bass and occasional Mercury Rev atmospherics, but thats what makes them exciting, that's why Matt Bellamy tells DiS they're his favourite new band.

I repeat: Crap sound, crap lights, and crap response means that tonight the band aren't firing on all cylinders. All the electroshock dancing in Euope, all the pop-glee of the single 'Come with You', lots of vocal effects, bouncing around in suits and t-shirts, being Belgian; none of that could help them pull it off tonight, nowhere near as well as the album shows they could/can anyway. Hopefully they'll go out on tour with the Coopers or someone ace like that next year and get the chance to show us what they're really made of.

Then Queens of the Stone Age come on. This band could visually be so much more than their record. Why go to a gig to hear what you can get at home? Tonight's all a bit boring for a band with so much imagery in their lyrics. A band so many people (two totally sold out nights at the Forum and places the country over) have paid upwards of £15 to see. The set was about 20mins too long and Mr.Screaming Lanagen was really boring, wandering on and off, standing there like a little rock teapot, doing those rough vocals in one of my favourite songs 'Autopilot' and a few others.

The album's amazing, we all know that. The gig was a damn sight better than loadsa stuff I've seen this year, maybe even the second best I'd been to all year, but i wanted to go somewhere else for an evening. I want to feel like I'd watched two mentalists, not just two blokes who fund their habits by writing quality stoner rock. I dunno. I wanted fire and clowns humping in the corner, I got neither.. Maybe I should just find a religion instead of relying on rock 'stars' to get me off. Whatever. Read the review of Cardiff or write your own review on the comments board.