Last time these Melbourne guys played Sydney they stole a trolley, filled it with shit, bashed it into submission, then walked off the stage and called it their set. The trolley bashing was accompanied by guitar and drumming, but aside from Aktion Unit’s apparent disrespect for the trolley wardens at nearby Marrickville Metro Shopping Centre, they also harbour a strong disregard for the fabled rulebook of rock music.

Tonight Dan Lewis and M+N critic René Schaefer are just as insolent. Again joined by Kate Wilson (of the Laurels and Black Ryder, among others) and Leith Thomas (True Radical Miracle), there is a conspicuous absence of trolleys or any other non-musical device tonight, but there’s plenty of blatant disrespect for the way a bass guitar, for example, ought to be played. Bashing it against an amplifier will not a very great song make, but a hilariously stupefying mess of feedback and speaker hiss it most certainly will. Twisting the machine heads of your guitar hard against the stage will not get you very far in the dog-eat-dog music industry, but if it’s a punishingly fried blanket of charcoal noise you’re wanting to achieve, by all means, that’s the way to do it!

Wilson’s sludge-paced drum patterns pulled all this aural fug together into some blessedly “musical” representation, but essentially what you’ve got here is four people beating the constituent sounds of rock into a shape that none of the other kids can play with. It’s a horrendous beast they’re exorcised, but geez, is it not the biggest, dumbest fun you’ve had since those New Zealand infidels The Dead C paid us a visit? No one left disappointed.

http://www.messandnoise.com/events/2000691#review_3592762