SEVERED HEADS @ JAZZ CAFE, LONDON

Founding member Tom Ellard reformed his industrial outfit Severed Heads for the final time, travelling thousands of miles to perform for the group’s last-ever show, which he decided to do in London and not Australia following technical issues in his home country. The only original member remaining, he performed as a duo with Stewart Lawler from their various albums spanning the early to late ’80s and beyond, opening on the bleeps of ‘Piggy Smack’ and the industrial jagger with Ellard’s romance vocals in the melodious ‘Hot with Fleas’; the latter saw Ellard smack Lawler with a toy rat for getting something wrong in the track.

Following the strained Krautrock sounds of ‘A Million Angels’ from popular 1983 album ‘Since the Accident’, they changed the tempo of the set with the pumping EBM beat of top 30 hit, ‘All Saints Day’, and exclusive-to-the-show, ‘Teddy Bears’, named after the sample of the nursery rhyme which they mixed into the track. An obvious influential sound on the group, they included the Kraftwerkesque ‘We Have Come to Bless this House’ from 1985 album ‘City Slab Horror’. More Kraftwerk influence featured again in their performance of ‘Tiny Wounded Bird’ from ‘Gigapus’, with its robotic voice sample and invasion by grinding noise feedback and string waves.

The second set opened with the pulsing beat of ‘Yogi Command’ with propulsive sound effects and a specially created psychedelic video, made by Ellard from the children’s cartoon show, ‘Yogi Bear’, playing above them. The track fed into the choppy ‘Casey’s Ion’ with Ellard resuming vocals. The duo demonstrated the group’s use of Cabaret Voltaire inspired tape loops in ‘Gashing the Old Mae West’ before picking up the pace for more dance tracks towards the end of the set including their 1984 dance-floor single ‘Dead Eyes Opened’, which was interjected with more noise. They closed on the hammering beats of ‘Goodbye Tonsils’, Ellard sowing in some freestyle vocals from Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’.

For the encore, Ellard performed a solo track on his own that he had never done live before called ‘Rhine’ from his 2015 album of the same name; after a false start he played the five-minute ambient track with its deep, orchestral undertone reminiscent of William Bennett’s Cut Hands.

21/07/25: Severed Heads @ Jazz Cafe, London.