Astrodeath, Space Junk, Celestial Oath, Foothills at Elton Chong, Penrith. 25 August, 2024
Elton Chong is a dive bar on High Street Penrith that inhabits what used to be a Chinese restaurant. The only neighbours it has after dark are a smattering of take-away places and a couple of brothels, so there’s limited scope for a deluge of noise complaints.
Which is good, because the place opens right out into the street, and tonight’s gig was extra, extra loud.
Unfortunately I was too late to catch Foothills but I was reliably informed by someone who knows better than many that they have a distinct My Dying Bride thing going on, and that’s a pretty solid recommendation.
Accompanied by Conan the Barbarian playing on the huge TV next to the “stage” area, caveman doomsters Celestial Oath came on, louder and hairier than ever. Celebrating the recent release of their EP House of Chains, the shirtless Lithgow lads roll out huge, expansive, psychedelia-laced doom. Full of dinosaur-sized riffs, twin vocals and miles and miles of guitar soloing, Celestial Oath are a slow-moving bulldozer ploughing a trail of doom-estation before them.
Next up it was time for Space Junk to unleash the madness that the Astrodeath boys had been raving about on their socials for the duration of this tour together. Space Junk immediately proved themselves to be well worth the hype their tourmates had built around them, smashing the crowd with a wild mixture of punk rock energy, splats of metal riffing, noise, incredibly catchy hooks and display of sheer drumming mastery from Cam Price. By their second song they had gone from unknowns to party favourite with the partisan crowd as their own wild abandon spilled out into the venue and onto the street outside and people rush inside to groove out.
Now it’s time for Astrodeath to rip it out on the first night of the NSW leg of their tour. And rip they do, of course. Like a small sun erupting, the energy release from this band is astounding in such a tight venue and the place goes nuts, almost overwhelming the stage area more than once. One after the other, Astrodeath dish out their heavy, catchy grooves to a crowd that can’t get enough. The smoking area out on High Street is deserted for the first time tonight, Golden Death Machine descends and if it’s possible, things suddenly get even wilder. Two of the Space Junk guys join Tim and Yoshi for the traditional onslaught of Children of the Grave, with the added bonus of Lachlan from Mountain Wizard Death Cult pounding out the beats on one of Yoshi’s toms. The night has gone from amazing to spectacular, the hits keep on coming and the cauldron that is Elton Chong hits boiling point at last with punters tumbling over each other in front of the band as Ceremonial Blood rattles the windows in the brothel across the street. Somehow everything holds together long enough for one more song, a victorious night for the Astrodeath lads who simply get better and ever more powerful with each show they play.
