The term “face melting” gets thrown around a lot these days (that’s not even really a joke. It actually did come up a surprising amount when I told people I was going to this show), so it seemed as though I should prepare myself for a very specific brand of thrashy blues-rock that was going to put my face in peril this past Wednesday. As a dedicated journalist (and someone who’s never been particularly fond of their face anyway) I was willing take my chances.
Seeing photos from the Reignwolf sets in Seattle and Vancouver the nights prior, it did initially seem that the Distrikt nightclub stage may not have the ceiling height to accommodate frontman Jordan Cook’s apparent 15-foot vertical jump. That would later prove to not be much of a problem as the band apparently didn’t plan to spend too much time on stage, anyway.
Before that, though, Victoria’s own Fever Feel gave the home crowd something to groove about. Stepping out of 1972 and onto the Distrikt stage, Fever Feel brought a tight, cool, funky sound that could have come straight out of a roadhouse bar – the only thing missing was the metal screen in front of the stage. With a look and sound that both seem to come from another time, I think Fever Feel may be as close as I’ve gotten to experiencing what my parents experienced on a Wednesday night in Victoria decades ago.
While I may have been a little skeptical of the hair, hats and moustaches beforehand, they certainly earned their eccentricity. I had a copy of their self-titled album in my hands before their set was over, and it hasn’t left my turntable since.
And then — after Bing Crosby finished asking the darkened room if we could hear what he heard — the fuse was lit. Like a bomb going off in the basement of the Strath, Reignwolf blasted their way onto the stage for an unreal, incendiary set. Messy, sweaty, real, Cook plays plays guitar like a freight train and deserves to be talked about in the same breath as Hendrix and Berry and Bonamassa and Page.
Climbing off the stage and onto a bass drum in the middle of the crowd, most of the show looked like a goreless scene from Night of the Living Dead, which was made all the more palpable by the audience’s hunger for a piece of Cook. For a city that’s world renowned for its politeness, there was a malicious bit of glee that came from seeing that we still know how to make a performer feel he may be in a little bit of danger.
There’s no way the screams from the basement didn’t make it to the Rooftop, and by the time the show was over we were ready to get back in line and do it again. Reignwolf really is as good as you’ve heard, but fear not; despite what was a very rocking night, my face remains intact.
