Posts Tagged ‘Leeds’

Chameleons / Lol Tolhurst / Kahula – Stylus, Leeds, 21st October 2026

Posted: 22 October 2026 in Reviews, Live
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Christopher Nosnibor

Chameleons might be considered as being among the ‘also-rans’ of the early days of goth, along with the likes of, say, Rose of Avalanche and The March Violets. Despite gaining a solid cult fanbase early on, due in no small part to a stunning debut album, subsequently signing to Geffen in the mid-80s, as well as receiving substantial critical acclaim, they somehow failed to take off. Calling it a day after the release of their third album, Strange Times in 1987, they reconvened briefly at the turn of the millennium. Their latest reunion, now five years in, is approaching their longest continuous run, and has also yielded a new album and EP. And so here they are, arguably as popular now as they’ve ever been, and not as a nostalgia act but a going concern. The number of younger people in the audience tonight is also testament to this.

The doors are early – 7pm – and Kahula are on early doors – 7:10 – so play to a mere smattering of an audience. The five-piece from Manchester are like many of the new, younger emerging bands who are taking the post-punky / goth sound of circa 1984 as their template. They’re a bit early U2, with vocals which evoke Lloyd Cole and Ian MacCulloch. They’re competent, but uninspiring, and they’re met with polite applause.

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Kahula

Lol Tolhurst by way of a support act is quite something, and a definite draw here. In the wake of his two books, the most recent being Goth, which has been well-received, the co-founder of The Cure has been enjoying something of a career revival after the wilderness years which followed his expulsion from the band circa Disintegration.

Of course, his set of early Cure songs – from the period where was an active co-writer – isn’t a solo set, and he has a bassist and guitarist (who covers the vocal duties) accompanying his drums, and they open with a super-slow and supremely dolorous ‘The Holy Hour’. The bassist throws Peter Hook lunges. And then they’re straight into ‘A Forest’, which would have been more expected as a closer. ‘Siamese Twins’ is next after an intro from Lol which references the closing line and Sylvia Plath. Of course it’s bleak.

Tolhurst’s drumming is simple / sparse / motorik depending on your perspective, but hearing these early Cure songs live and in a – comparatively – intimate setting (Stylus has a capacity of 1,000) is, almost inevitably, moving, even in the absence of Robert Smith’s unique vocal. You can see from the body language that they’re feeling it onstage, too, inhabiting these oppressive sonic spaces.

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Lol Tolhurst

Their rendition of ‘A Strange Day’ isn’t instantly recognisable, and it doesn’t quite gel, mangling that essential lead guitar part. ‘M’, however, sounds perfectly crisp and brittle. The singer seems to struggle with some of the notes on ‘The Hanging Garden’, where the other two seem at their most comfortable. Lol introduces ‘All Cats are Grey’ as a ‘slightly different version’, and reminds us that they’re his songs too. He seems to have revisited a demo version or something for it, and it does provide an interesting insight into his contribution to the writing process for those early albums. It’s drummier than the studio version. Again, it’s the vocals which are the weakest element, and it’s perhaps worth noting that the guy onstage isn’t the one featured on the tour promo. Or perhaps not. ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ prefaces a band intro, before they give us ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, and at their scheduled end time, launch into ‘10:15 Saturday Night’ by way of a finale. And having promised a set of Lol-era Cure songs, that’s what they gave us.

Chameleons open a set loaded with newer material (five of the seven songs from Arctic Moon feature in the seventeen-song set) with ‘Where Are You?’, and they sound fantastic. Their LED backdrop is like a movie through the set., and I suspect some of it – at least – is AI generated, and I find a certain discomfort in this. Still, there’s nothing remotely artificial about the musicianship or the enthusiasm with which they play the songs.

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Chameleons

The jangling indie of ‘Lady Strange’ lands third, and sits comfortably alongside the older tunes.

‘I wish these songs weren’t still relevant,’ Mark Burgess opines before they drop the first truly vintage track of the night in the form of ‘Up the Down Escalator’ from Script of the Bridge.

Burgess’ voice is remarkably strong, and with two guitars, they sound muscular. Burgess looks office casual, and pretty limber, too. He swaps his bass for a 12-string acoustic for the epic ‘David Bowie Takes Me by the Hand,’ another one from the new album.

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Chameleons

He warns that Trump is just the prelude of worse to come before ‘Saviours Are a Dangerous Thing’, and they land ‘Soul in Isolation’ at the hour mark – and if my ears don’t deceive me, there are nods to The Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘There is a Light that Never Goes Out’ by The Smiths’ slipped in along the way, giving something of a medley feel to this already huge tune.

Hearing ‘Swamp Thing’ with fresh ears and in a live setting, it’s easy to understand why they were hailed as they next U2. Meanwhile, the epic ‘Feels Like the End of the World’ is one of the standouts on Arctic Moon, and so it proves to be in tonight’s set, too. They wrap up a colossal set with the killer brace of oldies, ‘Second Skin’ and ‘Don’t Fall’. It’s incredible that songs of this vintage can still sound fresh, but then, it’s incredible that Chameleons are this good after all this time.

Forensics – Dogtown

Posted: 20 October 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Gotta love the Leeds scene. It keeps on throwing up noisy bands who really capture the zeitgeist. Sure, the city’s been redeveloped and gentrified and is a world away from the dingy days of Thatcher’s Britain, which saw it become the heartland of the early 80s goth scene. But for all its plush shopping centres and slick office spaces, home to wealthy finance firms, and for the way university life is now less The Young Ones and more the domain of the well-heeled – most often from overseas – who can afford to take on forty grand’s debt with only limited hope of a better job – it’s still a place where there is considerable poverty.

My generation was lied to: we were promised ‘graduate jobs’ which paid salaries well above the national average. Call me a failure: after a three-year degree in English literature – followed by an MA, and then a PHD, I failed to land a job which paid a ‘graduate’ wage and eventually, twenty-five years after graduation, I had my three student loans written off. Yes, I’d advocate staying poor as a career choice, naturally.

I digress somewhat, but the Leeds scene has always been, and continues to be, different. More recent years has seen the city’s sound move away from goth to noisy shit. This fashion started in the mid 00s, with the likes of That Fucking Tank, Pulled Apart by Horses, and These Monsters, and there was oddball stuff like Forward Russia! And This Et Al, and while lumped in with the post-rock trend. iLiKETRAiNS (later I Like Trains) always stood apart. Leeds has long been… well, different.

Forensics are different, too, and quintessentially Leeds, too. As they pitch it, they’re ‘Influenced by a desire to establish a sound that was as gritty as it was unrelenting’ and ‘have set straight their objective from the start; to put the world to rights as an unforgivably noisy 5 piece unafraid to incorporate influences from noise to hardcore punk, from black metal to garage rock’.

‘Dogtown’ is raw and biting. It’s built around a dingy, grainy garage-rock bassline, and during the verses, a sinewey guitar line twists through skewed angles in a fashion that calls to mind The Jesus Lizard, and, by some kind of default, Blacklisters. Then the chorus drives straight ahead with a racing urgency, the rabid punk vocals reminiscent of a screamier Wayne Barrett of Slaughter and the Dogs. It’s fierce.

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Deafkids / Kombi / Error Control – Boom, Leeds, 18th October 2026

Posted: 19 October 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Doors opening at 7 suggests an early start and early finish, and sure enough Error Control is on at 7:30. It’s very quiet in terms of attendance – so quiet initially I’m wondering if I’ve got the wrong night, but the beer’s decent enough and there’s some pounding, beat-heavy industrial noise pumping from the PA.

There’s a pattern emerging here: bands on respected underground / independent labels landing in Leeds to play to small but enthusiastic audiences play some of the most outstanding gigs I’ve witnessed all year. This was true of Might and Noisepicker when they played the Duck and Drake, and the same is true of Deafkids, who have brought Kombi, also from Brazil, along as the main support. It’s the tenth night of a world tour which has already seen them play mainland Europe, UK, and Ireland, with a stack more UK dates before heading back across Europe and onto Japan before a final haul round South America. These guys work hard. I do wonder if Angine de Poitrine’s long-sold out (and probably oversold) show at the O2 may have pulled some people away, and likewise the Ambient Leeds night at The Fox and Newt, but it doesn’t seem all that probable. So where the hell is everyone? Still, those present make up for number in terms of enthusiasm, and get to witness something special.

Error Control, playing blindfolded, creates a punishing wall of noise worthy of Merzbow. He begins by tentatively locating the monitor and draping the mic on it to generate a sustained feedback, which then goes through a succession of pedals and bits, which he tweaks and bashes to evermore brutal effect. It’s the kind of noise that’s both exhilarating and immersive, the harsh blast rendered even more intense by the use of only red lighting, which strobes. As he climbs up onto his bench in front of the stage, a potential health and safety nightmare reveals itself, but he gradually returns to the ground, where he proceeds to hail his pedal board onto the floor, and the set ends abruptly while he’s standing on the pedalboard and everything cuts out.

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Error Control

It’s only after I get home that not only have I seen him perform in person once before, but that performing with …(something) ruined, we’ve also featured alongside one another at two virtual gigs during lockdown.

Kombi’s set is a fine example of exploratory, experimental music, which reveals different facets as the set progresses. Billowing dark ambient with guttural growls gives way to fractured guitar and crackling contact work, a convergence of avant-garde and industrial. On the third piece, he unleashes Sunn O))) -like power chord drone. The second half of his set is a continuous extended piece built around dank loops and drones and wailing feedback, whereby the low frequencies bother the bowels and the shrill squall of treble terrifies the eardrums.

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Deafkids are having some technical issues and start twenty minutes later than advertised. Oh, but they’re more than worth the wait. And if they’re disappointed by playing to around twenty-five people, they don’t let it show, and their set is an absolute blinder.

They’ve not only captured the sound and feel of new album, CICATRIZES DO FUTURO (SCARS OF THE FUTURE), but take it to a whole other level live. Not for the first time, I’m amazed that there are just two guys up there: with a combination of pre-recorded drum loops, prerecorded and live guitar and extraneous noise loops, infinite delay on everything, especially the vocals, and some truly remarkable drumming, they conjure a dense, powerful sound, dominated by a thunderous barrage of percussion.

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Marian Sarine’s drumming is something to behold, often playing the congas with one hands while working his way around snare, toms, and cymbals with a stick, effortlessly switching to two sticks, and occasionally two hands. He smiles a lot, too. The resulting battery lands like Test Dept meets Swans, but with some techno breaks and a Latin twist. Oh, and there’s some looped beatboxing, too. Because they need more beats. It all builds to a head-shredding wall of noise. This ultra-percussive explosion is paired with abstract guitar work and vocals swathed in cavernous reverb and endless echo. It’s totally hypnotic, propulsive.

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With so much percussion, it’s got groove. It’s techno, trance, dub, shoegaze, and noise rock all at once. And some flute. It all makes for an intense fifty minutes. And it’s all done by ten past ten, which is ideal on a Sunday night.

Might / Noisepicker – The Duck and Drake, Leeds, 17th September 2026

Posted: 18 September 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

This is a very different kind of gig vibe. I arrive way before there’s any music due on with a view to giving my brain a rest from stress with a book and a few beers. The Duck and Drake is a cracking boozer which boasts no fewer than fifteen cask ales. There are three gluten free offerings, for those who need to know these things, and several vegan brews. The Wensleydale Fire It Up IPA at 5% is a particular standout, but they’re all well-kept and the Old Peculier is superb.

Personal disclosure: I wasn’t feeling like turning out tonight. My motivation and confidence were through the floor this morning, and the prospect of heading off to Leeds on my own to an unfamiliar venue while the reliability of the trains, particularly getting home, was in question, had done little to compel me to venture out. But since Noisepicker – whose last two albums, both released via Exile on Mainstream – I had reviewed and enjoyed, had made the effort to come up from London to play a free show, and labelmates Might had made the effort to come from bloody Hanover, I knew I’d regret it if I yielded to my urge to retreat.

Shortly after my arrival, the pub’s invaded by a board of corporate tossers on a treasure hunt by way of a works night out, but they fuck off before too long, and I get to sup my pint while listening to the soundchecks, and it becomes increasingly apparent that I’ve made the right decision. Around nine, a cluster of beardies, hairies, and folks in black filter in and take up around the bar. And then the music starts.

Noisepicker are an intermittent band, and a classic example of a band who fit making music around dayjobs and whatnot. There was a seven-year gap between Peace Off and the latest, The Earth Will Swallow the Sun, and they’re not a big touring band. But on stage, they present an almost telepathic cohesion from the outset. ‘No Man Lies Blameless’ lands second as they fire up the heavy blues riffery after a slow, drawling start. Harry Armstrong’s phlegm and whiskey (or Newcastle Brown) vocals growl and howl all the pain, anguish, and anger at the state of humanity, and there are times in the set where he and drummer Kieran Murphy articulate this with raw primal screams, and it’s magnificently cathartic. ‘Chew’ starts almost jazzy before hitting its stride with a thick riff. When they slow it down and strip it back, as on ‘A Taste of My Dying’, it’s got a hefty swagger. ‘The Earth Will Swallow the Sun’ brings a barrage of percussion, Armstrong playing drum and guitar at the same time. There’s a cover of ‘War’ which kicks ass, delivered with guts and gusto, and landing between Motorhead and ZZ Top. They go low and slow for the set closer, and they kill it. The rapport between the two players is apparent, as is the fact they’re clearly loving doing what they do.

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Noisepicker

Making their UK debut, Might start their performance off the stage, with flashing lights, smoke and dark atmospherics, before a piano backing track starts… And then the drums kick in, followed by the and guitars. The sound is nothing short of mind shattering in its density. It’s hardly surprising with that towering backline which dominates the stage and this small room. They’ve not travelled light. On record, they sound immense. Live… they take the sound to a whole other dimension.

They way they’ve worked the sound – and the visuals – is remarkable. I’d been curious as to how the duo of Ana Muhi (vocals and bass) and Sven Missullis (guitar, vocals, drums) would contrive to multi-task, and what I first thought was a drum machine actually appears to be a recording of a live drum track, which is up in the mix at a volume which corresponds with a live drum kit. Consequently, it feels like there are three people on stage – and what’s more, it almost looks that way, too, as there’s a silhouette of the drums being played which – unless my eyes deceive me – is in perfect sync with the audio. And with Nosepicker’s kit on stage behind them, and an abundance of smoke, you actually get a sense of their being an extra body up there.

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Might

They churn out some monster riffs, which churn and grind, but there’s more than brute force and brutal volume happening here – there’s texture and layering, and what I can only describe as sonic alchemy. And what they conjure is something which renders the cover art for their second album, Abyss, as an aural experience, and it’s one in which time is suspended and you find yourself completely immersed and on another plane.

Stripping it back to a drone on Mrs Poise, the percussion comes from Sven striking the back of his guitar while it’s laid across his knees. The acoustic-led penultimate song ‘Tightrope Walk’ is almost folky, but nevertheless intense, Ana’s vocal delivery delicate and utterly captivating, before they close with ‘Zero’ – the final track on their eponymous debut – and it’s immense.

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Might

On the face of it, this – the first night of a little low-key package tour –was a pretty ordinary event. A couple of bands playing in a pub in a corner of Leeds. But, pitched on the premise of being 100% DIY, with free entry and serving to provide a drop of an antidote to the relentless shitness of the world, it proved to be so much more. The bands both gave it their all. The audience was small, but appreciative. They chatted with the bands, and bought T-shirts. They bought beer. And ultimately, it was pretty damn special. No corporate shit, no pissy lager in plastic cups. Grassroots music at its very best. No-one’s getting rich off this financially, but in terms of the humanity, the life-enrichment, and the inspiriting qualities of a night like this, we all end the night with wealth beyond measure.

Los Tres Mortales – Bourbon

Posted: 6 September 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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4th September 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

So here we are in 2026, and while I’ve been suggesting that there’s a goth revival simmering up for a fair while now – I mean years rather than months – if finally seems to be upon us. TV:AM, Sick Man of Europe, and Mouth Ulcers in particular have been leading a(nother) new wave of bands whose sound is steeped in the old-school sound.

Perhaps Lol Tolhurst’s assessment in his recent book – plainly entitled Goth – is right. He devotes much verbiage to aligning the emergence of the first goth bands with Thatcher’s Britain in the late 70s and early 80s. This is by no means a groundbreaking, or even a new, framing of the birth of this disparate scene, and he really does labour this point throughout the book. Fair enough: he was there, living through it, and it was this, and a sense of being an outsider, which compelled him and Robert Smith to form The Cure. He also details how Manchester was the very definition of dereliction and deprivation, and that Joy Division ‘s bleak sound is the aural encapsulation of this. Also fair enough, but his entry for The Sisters of Mercy is barely a page long, reducing them to almost a footnote in the history of goth, while making no mention whatsoever of the other Leeds bands who emerged around this time. It’s his book, and his perspective, but to completely bypass the very epicentre of the emerging goth scene of the early 80s isn’t merely an oversight, it’s a misrepresentation.

This preface is necessary when approaching ‘Bourbon’, the debut single from Los Tres Mortales. While based between New Jersey, Ohio, and California, bringing together Caroline Blind and CWHK of Sunshine Blind with Troy Payne of The Wake. As the band bio recounts, ‘Following Sunshine Blind’s original run, Caroline continued making music with members of The Wake, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Faith and the Muse, The Sisters of Mercy, Sweet Ermengarde, Children on Stun and Switchblade Symphony’. As such, there’s a direct link between Los Tres Mortales and the original Leeds scene, which is as significant as that to the US scene and acts connected with the Cleopatra label (which was responsible for the release of the first comprehensive March Violets compilation, The Botanic Verses in the US in 1993).

Where I’m going here is in two directions at once: the first is that 2026 bears some strong parallels to those dark days of the late 70s and early 80s. Back then, the north of England copped it harder than London and its wider sprawl, and the same is true now, but the bottom line is that both here and in the US – supposedly wealthy nations – social divisions, particularly between class, and wealth have reached a new extreme. As a measure, CEOs earned the entire year’s salary of their average employee faster in 2026 than in any year previous – the 6th January, to be precise. Throw in climate change, world war, and the fact AI (not immigrants) is killing job opportunities and could well lead to the hastened demise of the species, and there’s reason to be pessimistic. Goth was always dark music for dark times, but unlike other genres – metal being perhaps an obvious example – goth balances nihilism with doomed romanticism and a certain poeticism.

And this is precisely what Los Tres Mortales give us with ‘Bourbon’. It’s dark, and revels in images of self-destructive rock ‘n’ roll excess. Because if the world’s going to end, why not see it out while spiralling into personal oblivion, soaked in booze and surrounded by chaos?

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Spindly guitars are nailed down by a thunking gritty bass, which is in turn melded to hefty rolling drums that are the absolute quintessence of that early 80s goth sound. Caroline’s dramatic vocals bring that Siouxsie / Skeletal family feel, while Troy’s brooding baritone whispers and growls a later below, replicating that taut dynamic that defined both The March Violets and Floodland-era Sisters. ‘Bourbon’ adds a dash of spice with the kind of filthy swagger reminiscent of The Batfish Boys (‘Swamp Liquor’ in particular). It’s a cracking debut, and one which brings together the different qualities of all of the contributors to deliver something which hits the bullseye on the first shot.

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Pleb – Grease Trap

Posted: 4 August 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Human Worth – 7th August 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Having thoroughly enjoyed the churning racket of Leeds grindcore / sludge / infernal racket duo Pleb when they opened for Unsane at The Brudenell in April, the announcement of their debut EP being released on the esteemed Human Worth label came as excellent news. And even better news is that they absolutely deliver on the promise of the live show here.

The credits very much summarise the two players’ contributions, with D. Fraser providing ‘Guitar / Feedback Hell’, and S. Myles doing ‘Drums / Squawks / Grunts’.

This is one serious fucking racket, and it would be a massive letdown if it was anything else, with eight songs and a total run time of just over ten minutes. There’s no pissing about here, just squalls of feedback and rasping, rabid vocals barking away low in the mix amidst the churning dingy noise. But then, this was always going to be the case. Check their pedigree: between them, their CVs list Cattle, Grub Nap, Groak – luminaries of the Leeds DIY noise scene that’s been thriving in tiny pub venues and basements and rehearsal rooms and the like for an age. It’s a tight-knit, but incredibly welcoming scene that’s spawned countless bands all committed to making the most ferocious, ugly noise imaginable. And with Grease Trap, you don’t have to imagine it.

And despite being just the two of them, it sounds like a full band, the guitar signal split to provide grinding low end and raging feedback at the top simultaneously. The result is a devastating sonic blast that assaults the senses with all frequencies. But why Grease Trap? The band explain:

“A grease trap is a tank that folks stick under the sink in a place that deals with food, it’s supposed to stop clumps of food and fat from going down the drain. There was one down our gaff and we had to empty it when we first moved in and I’ve never smelt owt like it. Me and our lasses dad were boaking the whole time while carrying buckets of foul stinking water up and down the corridor to try and wash the bloody thing out. Feels like that’s where we’re at as a society at the moment, we had all this stuff in place to try and stop things from going wrong but everything is rotting from the inside out and it’s poisoning the water supply. Greed is absolute, hatred is being weaponised and apathy is apparently cool again somehow. These songs are about the world wide descent into Fascism, the dutty roz, that orange bastard, our entire generation not breeding cos we’re in a hostile environment, technology turning us inside out, our inability to face our own problems without decking it and a bunch of other fun stuff. It doesn’t offer any solutions but sometimes you need to scream into the abyss eh?”

Lacking a grease trap myself, and my house having been built circa 1890 and still connected to the original ceramic Victorian plumbing which connects to the (also Victorian) drain system, I’ve had to invest in a set of drain rods, which are subject to regular usage to unclog backups that threaten to plug my back yard. they seem to be caused predominantly by mini fatbergs congealed around masses of hair (which evidently aren’t mine). And I can confirm that the job is nothing short of rank, dragging out clods of stinking clumps of sludge. it still doesn’t stink as badly as Reform, though, or, judging by footage online, as much as Trump when he nods off and soils himself. Rotten politics, rotten behaviour, rotten intestines, it would seem.

This is all of the above compacted into the most intense sonic explosion. It distils the rage at the fetid state of Western culture and the sewer state of our politics, our media, social media and blasts with complete abandon, and titles like ‘CLODS OF SHIT AND BONE’, ‘THE BRUISES MEAN IT’S ON THE WAY OUT’ and ‘THE EYES MELT FIRST’ sound exactly as you’d expect. With Grease Trap, Pleb vent the rage in the rawest, most direct fashion. And it absolutely hits the spot.

PS fuck fascism.

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Roman Jugg / Moose Knuckle / Boggis Fringe – The Lending Room, Leeds, 31st July 2026

Posted: 1 August 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

By the early 80s, the power of punk had mostly petered out. We were very much in the post-punk era, and most of the first wave of punk acts had called it a day or slunk into obscurity. And yet The Damned, whose debut, ‘New Rose’ was the first single by a British punk band, released their most commercially successful album in 1982 in the form of Strawberries, and their continued success through the 80s was largely attributable to their ongoing evolution, leaning into the gothic – and even the overtly goth – style. It was Strawberries which saw Roman Jugg join their ever-expanding family tree to contribute keyboard solos, and when Captain Sensible left the band a couple of years later, Roman stepped into the role of guitarist. So the pitch that they’re ‘playing songs from the back catalogue as they were originally meant to be performed’ might sound like quite a claim, but since the set does predominantly focus on songs from Phantasmagoria and Anything, which Jugg was involved in writing, he’s certainly got grounds. As for older songs, well he toured with the band long enough to be considered an authority.

Considering Gary Numan is playing the Peace Hall just up the road in Halifax tonight, there’s a respectable turnout, and deservedly so. The question of the impact of these large outdoor summer gigs in addition to festivals and their impact on regular gigs, particularly for those at smaller, and specifically grass roots venues may be one to debate in more detail separately, but so far this year it does feel as if the effect may be tipping towards the negative. These events seem to be as much social as musical, everyone plastering their social media with blurry pica and wobbly videos with shit audio to prove that they were there – that they’d forked out £60 to stand a mile from the stage and listen to people chat while slopping exorbitantly-priced crap lager over their own trainers. And fine, each to their own of course, but there’s no trickle-down here, and they’re not a gateway to grassroots events when people I know would often attend the small-venue gigs can’t make it because they’re either at one of these big gigs, or are tired / skint as a result of having been to one – or three. And again, is a £60 gig six times better than a £10 gig? Obviously it’s impossible to quantify, but I think it’s fair to say there’s a point at which the experience grows incrementally less enjoyable as the scale of the show increases. Somewhat ironically, The Damned, still fronted by Dave Vanian, and with Paul Gray on bass and Rat Scabies behind the kit, are playing at both The Peace Hall and Scarborough Open Air Theatre this summer, the latte as support to American rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires (Alice Coooper and Johnny Depp, with Aerosmith’s Joe Perry), which sounds nothing short of hellish. It highlights just how much the nostalgia market has changed the nature of things: I saw The Damned in the middle of the afternoon at Guilfest circa 2003, and they didn’t even sell out the 200-capacity Fibbers in York in 2005 or 2006. They were great, mind you, but felt like they were a band that worked best in a space with a low ceiling and where the front row is within spitting distance, literally.

Boggis Fringe are up first. Having risen from the ashes of dark post-punk combo Fatherfigures in 2024, following the death of their guitarist, Boggis Fringe straddle the space between old-school punks playing old-school punk, and some quite taut post-punk action. Tonight, the power trio are once again expanded to a four-piece, with the addition of Erin on second guitar, who also provides backing vocals and covers drumming duties for a few songs in the middle of the set. As we soon learn, this is because drummer Chris is still recovering from a knee injury, and isn’t yet back to strength to manage the entirety of the set. Add to the instrument swapping some guitar cut outs (pesky pedals and leads), the feel is a shade chaotic, but it in no way detracts, and if anything, makes it feel more authentically punk. Singer Doug plays like he hates his guitar even more than life itself, and gets bonus points for the most audaciously bad wordplay joke I’ve heard in a while.

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Boggis Fringe

I was rather underwhelmed the last time I saw Moose Knuckle in York at the back end of 2024. They felt sluggish and low-energy, and worst of all, entitled, as if they believed the audience should put in more work, despite their own apparent lack of effort. It seems I caught them on an off night. They really give it some on this hometown outing, powering through nine songs on half an hour. New song ‘Hard to Kill’, which lands mid-set, has strong hints of The Ramones. Their cover of The Prodigy’s ‘Breathe’ (mistitled on the setlist as Breath) is still the best thing in the set, mind, and of the originals, the squelchy funk rage of ‘Old Flame’ is a clear standout, although another new song, a grungy beast that’s called ‘Do It On My Own’ is a close second.

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Moose Knuckle

Roman Jugg has assembled quite a band for this latest tour centered around the songs he wrote while with The Damned in the 80s, notably absorbing garage duo Dave and Fi Dukale, aka The Tuppenny Bunters (interchangeably) on drums, keyboards, and vocals. They’ve been on my radar for a while, and although this doesn’t strictly qualify as seeing them as such, it does still sort of count as a twofer. Pat MacNamara is rocking turnups worthy of Kirk Brandon and sideburns that would impress Neil Young, and does a mean bass face throughout the set. Meanwhile Roman himself and guitarist Paul Bedford keep things low-key and keep the focus on the songs, which they bang out with admirable proficiency.

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Roman Jugg Band

The setlist is superb, and apart from ‘Elouise’ not featuring, is more or less a selection of my favourite Damned songs. ‘I Just Can’t be Happy Today’ drops fourth in a rammed set. ‘Edward the Bear’ goes down a storm before they’re back to plundering from Strawberries.

Dave and Fiona switch drums and keyboards for a bit, and they blast through a high-octane rendition of ‘Ignite’. Their styles are quite different, with Fiona bringing more swing and a fluid stroke that contrasts with Dave’s method, and this shift gives the set a certain dynamic. ‘Grimly Fiendish’ – probably the first song by The Damned I heard growing up still sounds ace – as if The Kinks had penned a cabaret goth tune. Dark but poppy and great fun. As the set moves into its final stages around the hour mark, they kick it up a couple of gears and raid the early singles for blistering takes on ‘Smash it Up’ and ‘Neat Neat Neat’. There’s barely a minute’s pause, during which only half the band actually vacate the stage before they encore with a hundred-mile-an hour ‘New Rose’ which delivers a final injection of adrenaline for the night.

Sod your social media ‘I was there’ big-names-in-massive-venues shows: this is still, and will forever be, what live music is really about.

Kath & the Kicks – Sleep

Posted: 30 July 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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3rd July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

For so, so long, the UK music industry was so London-centric that it actually hurt. The music press would flock to all the regular London haunts within spitting distance of their offices and declare that they’d just witnessed the next big thing. often, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, because said bands found themselves in the national press, but because London is so huge, they rarely needed to venture beyond the M25. There were moments in time when cities in the North spawned scenes which were simply impossible to ignore – Manchester in the late 70s and again in he 90s, Sheffield in the 80s, and Leeds, also in the 80s – as much as the press tried to look the other way there. But over the last fifteen years or so, Leeds has consistently birthed acts of a remarkable quality.

It’s true that, living in York, I may be prone to a certain Leeds bias of the kind which tinged the London-based press historically, but I still have to travel to the next county to see shows in Leeds, which requires both time, effort, and expenditure. In short, the quality has to be there to motivate me to go. But more to the point, this is not a matter of settling for what’s accessible. In the late 80s and early 90s, I yearned to live in London because it seemed that’s where I needed to be to discover the most happening music. This is not the case anymore: the Leeds scene is positively foaming with exciting acts, more than I can even keep pace with.

During this time of new band emerging on a weekly basis, Kath and the Kicks have been beavering away, building a following through a steady live schedule and a flow of exhilarating releases, the latest of which is ‘Sleep’.

Pitched as being for fans of Skunk Anansie, Siouxsie Sioux, Muse, Guano Apes, No Doubt, and The Runaways, ‘Sleep’ brings together slugging grunge riffery and doomy / goth vocals with a subtle pop edge – that is to say, amidst the ethereality and posed drama, there’s a melodic accessibility. Here, they bring the kind of guitar-driven heft, blended with soaring melody, that invites comparisons to heavier contemporary acts like Cwfen (and given that Sorrows was one of my top albums of 2025, that’s no small compliment).

Their name may carry connotations of a middling, middle-aged pub-rock band, but Kath & The Kicks bring full-throttle power, and properly kick arse with gutsy guitars and a distinctive dynamism, and with ‘Sleep’ they bring it all together into a densely-packed guitar-driven blast. Top drawer.

AA

Kath & The Kicks Promo shot 2

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