As Nikolai rack up the rock, the jury's still out (From Western Telegraph)

As Nikolai rack up the rock, the jury's still out

Nikolai The Riv Carmarthen, Friday May 9th

A friend who lives upline said ' you must check out Nikolai as I reckon they're the hottest band in Carmarthen and they're playing at the Riv this Friday'. Now the Riv is dockside in this frontier town, a barren barn of a place, cold even in May, which the strong following of dedicated fans were never going to fill.

The promoters had done their best in trying to brighten up the venue with some artistic wall hangings. But more of that later, for Nikolai were about to rack up the rock down by the riverside.

The band has been together for a year and has built up quite a reputation locally. They had energy tonight, certainly, but in a passive-aggressive way and they were somehow curiously uninvolving, which the lack of decent stage lighting didn't help.

The dire acoustics didn't do the band any favours either, but you could make out the sub Q.O.T.S.A., sub Foo Fighters intentions with a bit of Linkin Park thrown in - turbo rock with metal edges; a few mosh-friendly tunes and the odd bulldozing riff. Courageously, Nikolai only played their own compositions (which included guest rappers Jack and Laurie from a local hip hop band and a guest guitarist optimistically called Ziggy), in what was a fairly breathless 40-minute set, by the end of which the mosh-pit faithful looked worn out.

And to add to the excitement, halfway through we were treated to an off-stage pantomime, as higher powers objected to the content of one of the wall hangings and the whole lot ended up being pulled down amid tears and tantrums.

To their credit, the band played on regardless. Good to know that innocuous wall art can still provoke a reaction in this untamed town.

So are Nikolai the hottest band in Carmarthen town? Well, bearing in mind the poor acoustics of the venue, the dreadful (non) lighting, the theatrical goings on off-stage, and the fact that Nikolai will be playing in a forthcoming Battle of the Bands final in Carmarthen Park on June 14th, I couldn't possibly comment. You'll have check them out yourselves. MOLL