Bacardi/Hotpress plugged band of the year competition: Dublin heat

The third heat in the Bacardi/hotpress ‘Plugged’ Band Of The Year showcased a pleasingly diverse bill of young guns intent on making their mark and hoping to emulate last year’s winners, Woodstar, in securing a major label deal.

Writhe were hard to forget: an uncompromising hardcore thrash outfit who, in the words of John Denver, filled up the senses. Your nu-metal favourite band? Well, this four-piece weren’t quite there yet but one can see their romper stomper white noise attack going down well in the basement of Bruxelles.

Clear As Day were as different stylistically from Writhe as it’s possible to get: a smooth, radio-friendly soul-pop combo with a glamorous trio of blonde bombshells doing their Commitment-ettes thing. Nice. The singer had big Ginola-like hair and let notes linger longer than the relationships they described.

Leg are a young four-piece from Dublin who trade in orthodox guitar pop. The pesky singer has buckets of self-confidence and it’s a pity that the sound mix for their set didn’t allow us to hear the lyrics as clearly as we would have liked. Their sound was a little old-fashioned.

RomOlus Pop got my vote as the best band of the night. This Dublin quartet had energy, self-confidence, tight musicianship and, last but not least, good songs. Their style was very much mid-’80s guitar rock a la U2, with insistent guitar hooks and a booming rhythm section to boot. One word of advice, though: a name change is recommended.

The curtain-closer on the night was the exquisitely named Leaning Jesus, whose moniker prepared me for another metal assault but who actually turned out to be an interesting mish-mash of Dylan-esque street poetry and post-Achtung Baby guitar neurosis, all served up with the Hibernian big band soul of the Waterboys. In practice, though, Leaning Jesus seemed more like an idea than an actual band but credit to them for trying to make the dream real.

The winner on the night came after a tense tie-break and the judges came in with a large majority for Romolus Pop.