The first instal­ment of the Joe’s Big Toe “Unsigned Artist of the Week” is “Against The Wheel”, a dynamic rock four-piece from Birm­ing­ham. We caught them at The Act­ress and Bishop last week and we liked what we saw:

It’s 10:45pm and Against The Wheel are just tak­ing the stage. Whether it’s strictly busi­ness or they’re just run­ning late, it looks like there’s no time for small-talk. Guitarist/lead vocal­ist Gavin Flint and drum­mer Andy Wat­son share a quick exchange before launch­ing into the first song of the even­ing; and almost imme­di­ately it becomes clear that this is a band who know their trade. This is uncut no-frills rock that at times resembles a head-on col­li­sion between Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.

The music itself is elec­tri­fy­ing, care­fully craf­ted but instilled with a raw pas­sion you can only get from new tal­ent wait­ing to be dis­covered. Tech­nic­ally pro­fi­cient without sound­ing too stu­di­ous; it’s easy too see why Against The Wheel have cited such a var­ied selec­tion of artists as the influ­ences for their sound.

The only cri­ti­cism I could have about this band is that you can’t help but feel that some­thing is stop­ping them from really cut­ting loose. Watch­ing them play gives you the same feel­ing as being in a school­yard goad­ing your best friend into a fight, and I almost found myself wav­ing my arms at them; “more energy, more punk, more pas­sion!!” Their last two songs were clearly old favour­ites, as some­thing lit a fire under them and as they drew their set to an ear-splitting close, you could almost hear the reac­tion of the audi­ence around the room – “that’s more like it!”]

Against The Wheel will be at Marrs Bar, Worcester on 13^th Feb – def­in­itely worth a look.