Friday night Melbourne traffic is pretty special, and the gridlock can probably be seen from the face of the moon. After finding ourselves a spot in the most expensive car park available, we shuffled off to the Hi Fi Bar to see what was billed as Australia’s most awesome psychobilly line up ever. Luckily we caught the last few songs of the Casino Rumblers’ set. This four piece was formed in Sydney in 2001 (ish) and over the years they have incorporated a number of musical styles into their songs. It isn’t easy to categorise the Rumblers genre because their artistic offerings are not simple. Along with their psychobilly sounds, punk, rock n’ roll, ska and swing beats are fused. They have gained a substantial fan base and it’s easy to see why. There is much in the music to hook into. Two of their members were in hospital only a couple of days before this performance, so we were fortunate that the band could play its Melbourne set. A pretty heroic effort and much appreciated by Melbourne fans.

The Fireballs are icons in the Australian psychobilly scene, having started way back ‘in the day’. Birthed in the early 90’s, in a time when there was so much great music, they may never have dreamt such longevity was possible. Previously I saw this band play at Japan Aid at the Espy in Melbourne, and was taken aback by the energy they threw into their performance and by the response of their fans. For this support gig I considered wearing a crash helmet, but fortunately the Hi Fi is large enough for we less energetic punters to avoid the violent mosh.

Eddy Fury amazes us with his ability to sing in tune and play drums in time, putting all blokes who can’t multi task to shame. It’s like he perfected the art of patting his head and rubbing his tummy but decided that skill wasn’t enough. The Fireballs are still making great albums and on this night they performed a mammoth set drawn from their vast catalogue of music. Eddy, Joe Phantom, Dylan Villain, and Pete Speed play with passion and conviction and draw the crowd into their world of gravity defying coifs and punk/metal/rockabilly mash-ups. The likes of songs such as ‘Voodoo’ and ‘Big Black Hearse’ bring a tear to the eye, if only for the fact that the amount of enthusiasm infused into the performance of them makes us want to gasp for clear, revitalising air and guzzle endless cans of energy drinks.

German psychobilly band Mad Sin have earned themselves the title of ‘kings’ of their genre. They’ve had since 1987 to prove themselves and are now touring their 13th album Burn and Rise. The 18 songs on this offering are mainly a tribute to the band’s vocalist Koefte De Ville, who recently stared death in the face but fought off the grim reaper with a 40kg weight loss. One can only wonder how De Ville could have carried around the equivalent of an extra smallish human, and how he could still manage to breathe and sing for as long as he did. Certainly though, De Ville’s size is irrelevant apart from the fact that it spurned the band’s latest endeavour and probably his nouveau rise (like that of the legendary phoenix) gave the band courage to blend a wider variety of musical styles together to produce an album that is an interesting hybrid.

Most punters were thrilled to see this band perform their music in typical theatrical style, though there were a few criticisms that circulated at the end of a very long set. Figuratively speaking, De Ville consuming the band was the most obvious downside. Stein (guitar), Vudu (guitar), Valle (upright bass) and Laaf (drums) are excellent musicians all, but they were trampled in the brashness that is their lead singer. A few punters mentioned that their attention had wandered during a set that went way overtime. De Ville also seemed to be aggressive and angry, and at one stage threatened to ‘punch a fucking hole’ through one punter’s stomach. This cast a shadow over his performance in particular, and after this interlude some of us would have been left with a bitter after taste. Perhaps the most telling way to judge how a band has performed is to compare their efforts against those of the support bands. There was just no comparison here. The Casino Rumblers and Fireballs ‘rocked it’ and proved yet again that we can be justifiably proud of our home-grown talent.