Frenzal Rhomb - Gig Review 12th September @ Chelsea Heights Hotel, Melb VIC

Frenzal Rhomb
Chelsea Heights Hotel, Melbourne VIC
September 12, 2025
Support: Slim Krusty

Spring has sprung, and what better way to celebrate the incoming streak of increasingly bright and pleasant greater-Melbournian evenings than driving from Altona to Chelsea Heights to cover your reviewer’s favourite ever band/Australian counter-culture icon/ that-band-that-has-that-one-CD-my-mate-Mick-liked-enough-in-the-late-90's-to-come-watch-them-for-the-first-time-ever-tonight-at-age-of-forty-one; Shannon Noll!  

Oops, sorry... Frenzal Rhomb! Got confused by the shared headline space both acts had on the venue’s magnificently traditional front marquees. Go Shannon, Go! Wherever you are. The lofty Heights of Chelsea will see you next week.  

But first, a sweary, funny, earnest, and self-deprecating cherry on this evening’s metaphorically moist and regional vegan cheesecake was solo acoustic opener Slim Krusty. The young man has clearly led a journeyed and eccentric life, so inferred by innumerable and largely indecipherable smatterings of tattoos everywhere on his visible skin. With a deft ability to harshly bark songs about (but not limited to) the close-up thrill and working-classistly ethical practice of not validating one’s Myki - Victoria’s generationally fucked and overpriced public transport ticketing system – while heel driving a youth-sized kick drum to keep time was a jovial way to get the room full of tax-paying punk parents’ dwindling hearing warmed up for our heavily inveterate heavy headliners. Do please support up-and-coming artists like Mr. Krusty, even if you’re now triple the age you were when you first heard ‘Dick Sandwich’ and have more divorces than kids, or whatever.  It’s nice to try new things and the guy is trying his best to live out his dreams in an industry that grows increasingly oppressive for independent artists by the day. Everyone wins if you buy a shirt or record from him. Which you should because he was fuckin’ great.

In utter antithesis to seeing what the world has to offer, those two old JJJ hosts that punched on with Jackie-O behind the bins at Prahran Town Hall, the drummer from Mindsnare, and Dal (bass) rolled in to the cusp of Patterson Lakes to thrash out another night in their global and herculean two-years-and-counting tour of glitteringly mainstream 90’s pop album/certified gold ARIA darling A Man’s Not a Camel.

The staying power of Frenzal Rhomb cannot be overstated. They became a band before The European Union formally existed and have played (mostly) packed shows consistently (except for that two year lunch break near 2010) all over the world ever since (but largely at The Corner Hotel in Richmond and regional venues such as this one). Few bands on Earth that aren’t backed by some massively-budgeted-LLC entertainment Corp. can claim such effortful feats in such a self-motivated and financially non-linear vocation. This is socially-aware punk music delivered tight as a nun’s coight by four folks that remain the yard stick for a bunch of neuro-spicy punters with a healthy distrust of authority to enjoy an incredibly fun and nostalgic night out. Even fewer fast-as-fuck-and-rather-shouty punk bands would cross the milestone of 50-ish years old and still deliberately head to dozens of regional venues across Australia to make sure geographically diverse and greying ex-Freeza gig goers the country over can go “NEVER HAD SO MUCH FUN” again a lot for the first time in years.

Frenzal trim a bit of the fat from ...Camel, fully self-aware that “about 65%" of the songs on the album are worth re-learning/visiting/peating a quarter century after their release. Those gaps on this particular night were stuffed with plenty of witty crowd interaction, the unanticipatable arrival of a full Bonox packet on stage from the mosh, the sudden and accidental release of aforementioned powered beef stock all over guitarist Lindsay “I’m still on JJJ lol” McDougall by bassist Dal, the ensuing philosophical discussion regarding the ethics of a vegan covered in an animal products by circumstance, a bunch of other fun songs from nearly all their other also-real-good records, and TWO(!?!?) performances of soaring prog rock epic ‘Dinosaurs’ (full set list below).  

Even as the bands age progresses rapidly toward triple digits, Friends Of Rob bring the laughs, a ripping and exceptionally executed swathe of on-point anarchic bangers, and a healthy vibe of “Don’t be a cunt to each other” to every show; all of which remains a winning combination to get since-wrinkled ex-Goo/Next/Bang punters away from their kids for the night in regional droves. It’s even brung along some new young fans who were hard up against the barricade in ways that would make us elder mosh-pitters shatter every chalky rib in our entropically rich torsos.

Warms the heart watching a third (yep... fuckin’ third) generation of young concert goers like something other than modern hyper-produced and over-marketed pop idols like Troye Sivan and that Parkway Drive fella.

Frenzal Rhomb have been doing what they say on the packet better and for longer than any other band your humble reviewer and their twenty-one-year-music-journalism “career” has witnessed. It’s like a colloquial punk version of Midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings, but the singalongs are emotionally-based two-minute songs about drugs and disliking the government, and fishnet stockings are replaced with the shitting of one’s pants. Worth the drive from Altona, easily. All but a few punters returned to their native surrounding lands of Dandenong-adjacent suburban sprawl with hearts full of youthfully free memories past, while Frenzal flogged it to Warnambool to do the whole lovely deed again for the 87,004^th time. Don’t be a lazy old cunt and go see The Rhomb before Christian God sends another round of brain parasites, incurable infections, and various compound fractures to kill these national treasures once and for all. Time itself just can’t seem to get the job done alone. Go, Bonox, Go.  

Review by Todd Gingell

Setlist

GO FRENZAL GO
WE'RE GOING OUT TONIGHT
I KNOW EVERYTHING
IT'S UP TO YOU
RUSSELL CROWE'S BAND
MR CHARISMA
HIPPY SONG
LET'S DRINK A BEER
DINOSAURS
I DON'T NEED YOUR LOVIN  
DO YOU WANNA FIGHT ME
DRUG DEALERS
5000 CIGS
BIRD ATTACK
WHEN MY BABY SNILES ST ME I GO TO REHAB
GONE TO THE DOGS  
I MISS MY LUNG
METHADONE
NOT MY FRIEND
MUMMY DOESN'T KNOW YOU’RE A NAZI CUNT
THE WRECKAGE  
BUCKET BONG
PUNCH IN THE FACE
NEVER HAD SO MUCH FUN

Get ya tickets here