Footprint In Your Christmas Rebellion, Manchester 20th December 2024 Gig Review

You can’t beat a good old local gig, can you? For me, 2024 has been a crazy year for live music on a personal and professional level. From the fields of Catton Park, to small dive bars, I’ve seen bands of all shapes and sizes. It seems fitting to check out an array of local talent in my final gig of the year at the wonderful hub that is Rebellion, where I also saw my first bands of the year. Whilst others in the city were imprisoned in their office Christmas parties (booo!) or at other local gigs in the area (fair play), it was still going to be a night filled with festive-based shenanigans and over-the-top silliness headlined by local party metal legends Footprints In The Custard, along with an undercard meatier and juicier than the turkey your mum will be basting and serving on the 25^th of December! Let’s get into it…

 

The Paul Taylor Experience

“What the hell is this?” I thought to myself, upon seeing a solitary middle-aged man up on stage donning a pink blazer, Santa hat, and shades combination that screams of a mid-life crisis! That’s the thing though, Paul doesn’t care what I or anybody else thinks of his music. That’s admirable. After all, covers of chart classics cleverly reconfigured into Christmas-based japery and delicious puns aren’t supposed to be taken seriously! Instead, they served as a surefire recipe for belly laughs and awful dad-dancing; the kind reserved for rare family weddings! If you can imagine this grotesquely brilliant site with Paul on stage playing the iconic main riff to Gary Numan’s “Cars” with a kazoo and rebranding the lyrics to ‘Here in my sleigh’, then you’re kind of halfway almost there. By the end of the set, I was thinking “What the hell is this…THIS IS AMAZING!”.

Confyde

The first ‘real’ band of the evening (Paul Taylor’s words, not mine), a four piece act that were new to me but later made it clear to me (and my many first-time viewers) what exactly they were all about! If they were attempting to replicate the early 90s grunge ‘Seattle’ sound, they did so very well! With hard-hitting commentary on societal issues such as homelessness forming the basis for their lyrical content, everything about them just screams unfiltered attitude and a desire to write music that comes straight from a passion dwelling deep within them. It’s a shame the audience wasn’t as engaged…until a clever cover of Bewitched’s ‘C’est Le Vie’ seemed to wake everybody up. I blinked, and next thing you know we had a nice good old-fashioned festive moshpit which was just a reward for the band’s solid set.

Technologist

Probably the 76^th time I’ve seen the Manchester underground’s answer to Opeth now, Technologist have slowly built a solid reputation in the city for their brand of progressive death metal that is as polished and refined as it is devastatingly brutal. Just ask anybody who was violently headbanging along to those bone-crunching grooves and gnarly riffs (I was one of those). Guitarist Eddie displayed a plethora of scorching lead guitar solos that would make casual observers or guitar tone enthusiasts purr in admiration in some new material for the band. They return to the venue early next year for Metal To The Masses and will offer a serious challenge to the title of Manchester regional champions!

Shred Dibnah

From progressive death metal to doom, it was now time for that band wit’ chimneh an’ flat caps (this works better if read in a strong Lancashire accent). However, to reduce Shred Dibnah to just a band with a custom-built smoke machine disguised as a chimney would be foolish! Each sludge-filled rumble of Jonny’s bass and every bone-crunching strike from Wizard’s drums was as thick and dense as the smoke bellowing from that chimney, making more noise than a 3 piece should be able to make! Dave always loves introducing their single ‘Middle Lane Moron’ as a tribute to anybody in a Toyota Prius and their awful driving habits, but tonight opted to dedicate this to the ‘fat prick in a sled’ good old Saint Nick himself. Another band will be competing in next year’s Metal To The Masses and will be a respected competitor.

Footprints In The Custard

It was getting late, but anybody who had to scramble for the last train/bus home really did miss out sadly. Even with them being a man down and only 4 of their usual compliment of 5 on stage, their energy never relented and they sounded as full as ever on stage. The music (which could be described as a bit of thrash, punk, and melodic death thrown into one bizarre melting pot) is really secondary to the on-stage shenanigans and party called Footprints In The Custard. Circle pits, stage diving, and inflatable candy cane ‘sword’ fights; the crowd engagement was 10/10. After all, songs such as ‘Don’t Be A Cunt’ have a message we can all abide by and can be understood by anybody. Now, also try to imagine the Rebellion stage with the band themselves and probably half of the audience accompanying them, many topless, singing along to ‘Willies Are For Weeing’, the band’s final song of the set. This is probably why aliens don’t want to visit us. This sums up the sheer absurdity that Footprints are and is possibly the best analogy I can provide, to sum up tonight’s energy.