IAN – Tellemahookah – Superhooch – Coventry – Live Review

Fargo Promotions Presents IAN – Tellemahookah – Superhooch – The Tin Music and Arts – Coventry – 24th January 2026.

It’s Fighting Boredom’s first gig of the year and it promises to be a loud one. Fargo Promotions have brought together Coventry’s weird and wonderful Superhooch. The heavy heavy psychedelic swirling of Tellemahookah and the solid wall of dense noise created by IAN. Unfortunately we need to apologise to you lot as we missed the first two bands, but better late than never eh? Read what we thought below.

We arrive at the tin time to see Superhooch, for reasons you don’t need to know about we missed the first two bands, both of which were outstanding according to general consensus, we’ll catch them next time. Anyway, Superhooch come onstage and immediately turn into Coventry’s answer to the Beastie Boys, Check Your head era, shouted back and forth words and a funky punky groove, a bloody great groove. The long hairs are already dancing. They carry on with another ace groove, they are never the same, they are off centre, densely packed musically and never ever straightforward. They are also loud. There is talking between the songs, mainly self deprecating and saying that this songs ‘pretty good’.

A slow stoner riff now with space to swing, the drums are sparse and to the point and the vocal sounds high and desperate, this slides into shimmering stoned out gloriousness. The reaction to the soft sections and desperate vocal in my head is made stronger by the noise in between. The beat is carried on with the drums and a single high guitar line, this is ace.Then it gets stupidly heavy again to finish.

They dedicate the next song to Steve Brophy, one of the original Cov Punks who passed away earlier this week. A nice touch. It’s got a hard groove and a fast vocal which stutters and stop starts into more punk funk, it’s hard and cool. The vocals turn Superhooch weird and it works. They slip into a low hard hum then more funk and scattered beats, they’re way out on the edge now hanging on desperately, immense super massive guitars lead into more funk and then good old rock’n’roll, then metal then… oh bloody hell, why am I even trying, the whole thing is more than I can write, the vocal turns dissonant lost and right there in your face. Superhooch are playing an absolute blinder. I strongly suggest you get to see them soon.

Tellamahookah’s vocalist and bass dueler has the best Moustache in Rock’n’Roll whilst sporting a distressed Frank Zappa vest and hair that would break many a barber. The other two in the band are long of hair and they all look like they were born to do this. They start low and measured, then just carry on undulating up and down, heavy and cool. It turns on and becomes bloody epic, starts and stops and the psych gods are in Coventry tonight. The Heaviness is physical, it rocks and rolls but it does it while weighing down on your head like a concrete block. As the Photographer shouts, ‘They’re cocking Loud!!’

They find a groove and destroy it, the music is shifting around while the bass and drums hold it all down and let the guitar swing, groove and just be massive. They switch to Prog for a minute or two and then the heaviness comes down again. The drums stop and they keep going over and over and then they’re back, even louder, they explode, hammering down and then the rest of the band catch up and smash into a spectacular howling psych out, it is brilliant. This morphs again into a gigantic stoner riff, a huge groove that just smashes into me and carries me away deep down into the crushing depths of the pitch black ocean.

They slide into a low down and downright filthy riff, heavy, but you already know that, and spaced out to the edge of the universe. The groove grows back into psychedelia and it fills the room, there is singing but I can only hear it merging with the noise and trust me, it’s enough. It’s filling me up, my head is stuffed full of this fantastic groove and my body is moving to it. My notes are barely readable but I know what it feels like. It’s a voyage into the dark swirling unknown with massively fuzzed out guitars and the best damn groove you can find on a cold Saturday night in Coventry.

IAN are headlining. They deserve it too, anyone that can follow Superhooch and Tellamahookah in front of a partisan crowd and more than hold their own deserve it. Hold their own they bloody do. The first thing that strikes you is that there’s a cellist on stage, not what I expected at all, but it adds another dimension to the beautifully crafted slices of long loud and dense music they conjure up. The second is that these songs are long, I mean long man. They start slowly and very quickly get ear shreddingly loud, they tell us after the first track that they have four songs for us, but they are all long. He’s not kidding.

They are long stretched out pieces that range from impenetrable brilliant noise to sad, slow subtle music that then descends into massively heavy and dense sounds. Think Godspeed You! Black Emperor but far heavier and with a bad attitude. They sound brilliant, thickly layering noise onto noise until it’s nearly suffocating. It’s an excellent way to finish the night, I wish I’d bought an album.

IAN