At first you're astonished by the slick rebellion, the kinetic frenzy of it all. Amen's splenetic little frontman, Casey Chaos, keeps running laps round the stage. He jumps off the drumkit, slings his mic stand away, climbs to the top of the speaker stacks, leaps back down to stage level, then dives immediately into the crowd. So often, you wonder if he's trying to clock a season's best for the gig assault course.
Even by the standards of the recent glut of visiting statesmen - Queens Of The Stone Age, At The Drive-In, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Chaos' pursuit of rock'n'roll excellence is extravagant. Los Angeles' Amen represent the heavy metal wing of this onslaught, the band who provide a bridge between the hardcore and garage rock-influenced music of their cool peers and the significantly more lucrative nu-metal movement.
And certainly, the package is impressive. Chaos' lyrics are a zeitgeist-friendly mixture of self-loathing and explicitly visceral attacks on church, state and corrupt authority in general. Their t-shirts, for your edification, read, 'COPS SUCK C**K', 'F**K YOUR PRAYERS' and, punchily, 'JESUS F**KS'. The bassist is called Tumor, John. His t-shirt announces, reductively, 'C**T'. I suspect you're getting the picture.
All very calculated, then, but incredibly exciting. As their recent second album, 'We Have Come For Your Parents' proves, Amen are streets ahead of more established angst-metal peers like Korn at expressing the nebulous revolutionary ideals of inchoate youth. Uh-huh. 'Justified' is as sprung and righteous as prime Rage Against The Machine, whilst 'Mayday' updates The Stooges' search and destroy aesthetic with brilliant results. Though as yet another misogynist lyric equating horror and despair with, obviously, female genitalia grinds out, you can't help thinking Chaos should take up fell-walking, or perhaps ornithology, and give himself a break now and again.
But, in contrast to their wild, wild reputation, it all seems rather theatrical, right down to the little speech about being, "A living embodiment of what a rock star is not. Fred Durst is a rock star, I'm f**king not." Until, that is, the encore, when Chaos declares, "No-one can hurt you as much as you hurt yourself," and starts cutting gashes into his forearm. It's here you start feeling queasy, not just at the amount of blood pouring, but also at the fact he might (I)mean(I) it all. Or, alternatively - and given the frequency of his self-mutilating onstage - that the desire to do himself damage is bound up in his concept of what makes a good night out for his audience.
A messy, thrilling and ultimately troubling show, then. "You're a f**king d**k," shouts one of his fans, as Chaos' blood drips onto the moshpit. If only it was as simple as that.
IMAGES: HAYLEY MADDEN
