Nottingham, England, Mar. 8, 1997

By STEVE BELL

I've just seen the band live for the first time, and they were truly outstanding. Daniel said he had the flu so was apologising for his vocals, but if that was a bad performance I'd love to see them on a good day.

He has so much energy it's unbelievable. I thought his head was going to come off with all the headbanging he did, and all that energy with the flu?

They played songs mostly from the new record and a good deal from frogstomp. No sooner had the circus intro been played it seemed the band were playing the encore of Israel's Son. Somewhere in between they played (in no particular order):

Slave
Freak
Abuse Me
Learn To Hate
No Association
Israel's Son
Tomorrow
Pure Massacre
Suicidal Dream
Madman

Daniel was wearing a T-shirt with "Nobody knows I'm a Lesbian" emblazoned on the front. A guy in the crowd was heckling him about it, to which Daniel replied, "What, you're a lesbian as well? You can't be, you're a guy!" He then invited the heckler to come up on stage and prove his orientation -- he well and truly told this guy to pull his head in (with style)!

The band played an outstanding version of Abuse Me with the help of their equipment tech on second guitar. There was a novel introduction by Daniel: "We're now going to be joined on stage by a guy that used to play guitar for Black Sabbath -- welcome, Tony."

The whole set from beginning to end was a pure energy bomb, and they were well received by the Notts crowd.

Forget the comparisons that are constantly made in the press between silverchair and Nirvana. Yeah, Daniel's got blond hair, plays guitar and fronts a three-piece rock band. But that's where the similarities to Kurt Cobain end.

It's clear to me that silverchair have more life and energy, as well as more songwriting talent than Nirvana could've ever hoped for.