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PEACH should play more gigs like this. The indie audiences (and occasional MM journalists) they've
found themselves playing to lately just don't seem to understand.

But, as metal's church grows ever broader and the term becomes less definitive, they've finally found an audience who can accommodate their breadth of vision.

All the best bands experimenting with metal are learning to spread their power over a wider area, and Peach are exemplary - no longer an anal retentive, single-cell drill but something that evolves as it plays, expanding to draw in a variety of textures and then closing down, the pressure forcing it into a driven, pregnant tide. The final "You Lied" is a visceral odyssey, coursing ever onwards and briefly dropping away,
as it breaks out into a jewel-studded expanse. They go down a storm.

Get wise.

In the ongoing politicization of rock, I'll always rind the will-to-power of Tool, RATM, Rollins era/far more affecting than the regression tactics
of Cornershop and Mambo Taxi. Not just because they've given their ambitions form, but also because, strangely enough, they're more human. Tool's world isn't reduced to the simplistic dualities of good/evil, problem/solution - they've recreated a scenario where devout fury and
self-doubt are intractably bound.

If virtually everything about Tool is muscular and physically demanding, it's because they're trying to form shoulders big enough to take the responsibility for the conflict upon themselves. When James Maynard Keenan sings, the combination of anxiety, urgency and hurt becomes something emphatically gorgeous, like a balladeer forcibly injected with steroids. His voice isn't the guttural wrench of his peers, it has breadth,
depth, foresight and experience. It glides through storms. The metal-funk crossbreed has the same degree of sensitivity, forsaking heavily punctuated starts and stops for something just as driven, yet sensual, tunnel-vision propulsion dilating into powerfully engaging sweeps - and catching every nuance in between.

Keenan introduces one song with a true story about a cornered cat clawing its way through its (human)
oppressor's face, and it's a good analogy. Tool are in a similar position, forced into a sudden realization, an awareness above and beyond the litany of everyday demands. For the most part, Keenan stands crouched forward, and with his well-built body locked helplessly into position and his existentially-worried-kid expression, he looks as though his only option is to inhabit a frame that can withstand persecution, and yet one he doesn't know if he can accommodate for long. His convulsion at the end seems inevitable.

Tool are a human timebomb.

Jonathan Selzer

Veteran noiseniks Gorgeous Space Virus draw a healthy crowd despite a recent cabinet reshuffle which led to an immediate vacancy in the singing department. The remaining members gamely soldier on, sharing vocal duties, but under their feedback-encrusted racket the sound of a lowly human voice is always going to be a tad incongruous.

Support band Peach are on a roll at present. Their second single, the 'Burn' EP is turning heads, having won them a six album publishing deal with Rhythm King. A tour with Mint 400 looms, and there's a limited edition seven-inch single in the
pipeline. Meanwhile the promo for 'Burn' is gaining plays on Satellite TV rock shows as yet unsure whether Peach are the indie face of metal or the metal face of indie.

Tonight their audience includes a fair smattering of Americans - a hangover from last year when the band played a series of dates in Los Angeles, supporting Throwing Muses and touching base with the then unknown likes of Tool and Green Jelly. By all accounts, Peach's exceedingly English brand of heavy metal shoe-gazing captivated stateside onlookers who saw nothing out of the ordinary in a bunch of longhaired Brit kids acting like they were pretty much born to rock.

Tonight Peach are confident and lively. The Marquee may be a venue of legends but it has zero atmosphere and a band has to be pretty special to rise above the nondescript surroundings. Fortunately Peach are up to the challenge, kicking off with a brace of the short sharp songs I thought they'd long since discarded. It's a pleasure to be reminded that 'Don't Make Me Your God' was the most striking and unusual debut single in ages. Neat lyrics too: 'You just want to be my dog, But I don't want your wet tongue in my face'. 'Signposts In The Sea' (the title culled from Vita Sackville-West, trivia fans) is Peach's most sublimely tuneful moment, as front-man Simon cheerfully solos with John Barry's theme from 'You Only Live Twice'. And was that really a snatch of The Girl Can't Help It'? God, this is fun.

The tunes dispensed with in an orderly fashion, Peach grind down the gears for the slower, longer, heavier numbers. Then the riffs begin. 'You Lied' is like Ministry dueling with Black Sabbath in Valhalla. Bassist Justin looks like Satan alive, his goatee flailing, his hair the longest I have ever seen on a human head.

The volume is thunderous. I'm plugged, naturally (there's only one thing worse than being a failed musician, which I am, and that's being a failed deaf musician, which I don't intend to be). Peach's drummer is also wearing earplugs, and it's just as well. His playing could halt a rhino, and it's largely responsible for endowing Peach with the most genuinely powerful hard rock sound to emerge on this side of the Atlantic since the glory days of El Zep.

A recently aired TV documentary detailed Peach's battle with a distraught next door neighbour who claimed the noise of the band's rehearsals was making her life a misery. The conflict was eventually resolved amicably, but if Peach retain their present form they should have people queuing up in droves to live next door to them. See you in Valhalla.

Pat Reid