Archive – Gig review: The Angels at Shellharbour Workers Club (1990)

Live review: The Angels at Shellharbour Workers Club, Friday, June 8 1990

By STEVE MASCORD

TONIGHT, THE Angels were actually faced with something of a challenge in front of arguably their most fanatical audience. Having to follow two superb support bands and one good one, they opened with “No Exit”, Doc sliding slowly into gear — but he soon got wound up as he fed off a baying packed house. Whew.
‘Bald Bob’ Spencer storms around the stage with his sunnies on, Rick Brewster is motionless and expressionless as usual, Brent is banging away gutsily and James Moreley gets brave and takes over vocals at one stage.
‘Beyond Salvation” sends proceedings into warpspeed — and that’s where they stay; hard, crunching fare without the trimmings. “After The Rain”, “Jump Back Baby”, “Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again”, “Let The Night Roll On”… Bang, bang, bang, like a callous assassin who can’t be bothered with a silencer and whose bullet shatters into a million pieces upon impact.
No widdly solos, no stoopid between-song raps, only one encore. Just classics and unbridled, anarchic mayhem everywhere.
Doc sings “Bleeding With The Times”, muttering to a pained, leashed riff: ‘I see myself silhouetted at the wheel/Like an alien without a friend/Nothing to conceal/So I climb into the backseat/and I wonder if it’s love/When it’s down to getting naked/it’s just like any other photograph’. I sense the chill stirring at the base of my back and making its way northward.
I’ve been thousands of miles (and used up even more dollars) looking for the perfect gig in the last three months, and little did I know it was waiting for me just down the street.