Mahumodo - Barfly @ The Monarch - 15/06/03

We're all responsible. If you didn't already, you should have given the time of day to this band. I should have written about them before this. The press should have given the coverage deserved by a massively promising new band. And Mahumodo should have gotten their shit together and progressed beyond this - the freefall of such potential is too much to stomach. But you didn't, I didn't and they didn't. Those in the know cite interband tensions, control freak tendencies, Corgan-esque frontman behaviour as the cause of the breakup. Who knows? It changes nothing; we're at Mahumodo's farewell gig, the only exception in a slew of upcoming gigs that they cancelled a week or so ago.

Of course farewell gigs come and go. It's nothing new, the disintegration of bands, the crumbling of once kinetic chemistry - but in circumstances like this, when this band could have shredded the hearts of a million fragile rock kids, it's never less than infuriating. Of course frontman Mehdi is a control freak - this kind of tight, throbbing sonic maelstrom doesn't emerge from a couple of drunken late night rehearsals. This is the emotional frequency of the Deftones, jacked up to 3,000,000 hz as Mehdi's aerial vocals shatter the sound barrier and keep on accelerating. This is the deft guitar patterns of Jane's Addiction and Earthtone9, shed of pretension and clad in thundering intensity, as beauty wrestles with uncompromising brutality. Right now, this is the most emotional thing you can imagine. 'California' is majestic and wrenching when it hits you, clenching your innards and flooding your eyes. At times you beam with exhilaration at the sheer heights Mahumodo were and are capable of charting; elsewhere you swallow a bitter pocket of bile when you dwell on what they could have been. People flood from the Monarch mourning for a band they've never seen before... too late, but better late than never. Mahumodo, you are missed.