Richard HolmesDruidess/Morag Tong @The Lubber Fiend, Newcastle, 8.10.26
A week into their UK tour, Druidess’s Shonagh Brown is struggling. Her vocal cords, she admits, aren’t playing ball. As a result, there’s an impromptu setlist change, mid-show.
Nevertheless, she sounds awesome.
Apart from frequent sips of water, this crowd wouldn’t have guessed anything was amiss.
The astonishing Knightingales is delivered with her rich, Joplin-esque tones to the fore. On Descended from Giants, the mysteries of Hollindside Manor, a medieval ruin nestled in Derwentside, are unveiled with her trademark panache.
Powering through? She’s on full power.
Shonagh looks like she’s having fun, too. And not just when Morag Tong emerge to celebrate her birthday with a firework-topped cake, followed by keyboardist James Hill leading a rendition of Happy Birthday Shonagh Brown (to the tune of Long Live Rock and Roll).
“We’re the party at the end of the Black Sabbath song” explained guitarist/sax player Danny Downing in our recent interview. “Cheerful doom” was Shonagh’s take. And tonight that means a performance full of vim and vigour, a suite of hard rocking Iommian anthems, and plenty of playful banter.
When Danny dons his shades, picks up his sax and soars above Sam Armstrong’s jazz funk grooves, you know you’re in for a good time.
And when the moustachioed axeman opens The Forest Witch’s Daughter with that tar thick, gut quaking riff, grins widen.
Sure it helps when you have an album as potent as Trip Meadow to draw on. But Druidess’s time on the road is paying off too. They’re a force of nature, seemingly sharing a subconscious connection – like the best live acts always do. And they just keep getting better and better.
Redefining heavy
You don’t so much listen to Morag Tong as absorb them.
That’s true of the Londoners’ recorded output, including the monumental Last Knell Of Om and Grieve albums.
But live, their soundwaves are even more potent, entering the body by osmosis.
Thankfully, The Lubber Fiend’s immense PA is up to the task.
Opening with At First Light, an astonishing piece of sonic architecture, the quartet entrance us, hewing slo-mo riffs from towering mountains of ice, weaving delicate melodies into crushing noisescapes, and riding waves of nail-biting tension.
We Answer sees a few jaws drop to the floor, as beauty deconstructs into hellish doom, and drummer Adam Asquith’s anguished, stream of consciousness vocals take command.
Yes, there are certainly echoes of Sleep and Yob’s intensity in Morag Tong’s delivery.
But they’re confidently carving out their own musical space.
And it’s filled with epic songs that should be felt, not just heard.
