Nine Black Alps
It’s Sunday night, and Nine Black Alps are deafening the Brookes audience with their assertive blend of post-grunge punk. The amps are turned up to eleven, and, throwing out songs of such force as ‘Not Everyone’, it’s clear that this is a band with a big future. By the time they leave the stage with the final notes of ‘Shot Down’ being torn out of Sam Forrest’s guitar, Nine Black Alps have made a number of new friends in the crowd.
Rewind a couple of hours, and Sam Forrest (vocals/guitar) and Martin Cohen (bass/guitar) are sitting on a bench outside the venue. Compared with the unhinged personas they display on stage, they’re different people. ‘Chilled out’ would be an understatement.
Content to relax in the early summer sunshine and drink tea, you would have to wonder, do they feel like rock stars? “Well, you catch yourself out onstage sometimes,” says Sam, “like when we had a dual guitar solo in Cardiff and felt we had taken a step too far. There’s that invisible line and we crossed it!” For them, the support slot on the Kaiser Chiefs tour has been very much a step in the right direction. Asked about the response they’ve got.
Sam comments that “people have clapped” adding “at this stage it’s pretty much all we want.” It’s a fair point, as opening for a major band on any tour is not an easy task, especially when there are a small number of fans chanting “Kaisers! Kaisers!” This summer means only one thing for Nine Black Alps. The festival circuit.
‘We’re playing Isle of Wight and coming on straight after Rooster!’ exclaims a rather satisfied Martin, and from the sound of Nine Black Alps tonight a large number of teenage girls are going to get one hell of a wake-up call. The thing with Nine Black Alps is that they look indie. They look like they belong on the cover of NME, scruffy hair and all. But, give them some guitars and a microphone and it’s a very different proposition.
‘We went for heavy and the songs just came out’, remarks Martin, and he couldn’t be more right.
28th Apr 2005