NME are hardly the go-to publication when it comes to hardcore punk, yet for whatever reason they’ve put the drunken, skateboard-loving New Yorkers in the headline slot of their Radar Tour. Together with The Amazing Snakeheads they’ve packed out the Bermuda Triangle on this chilly Friday night.
Having never been inside the venue (formerly The Tube) before tonight, our first impression is that it seems like the perfect place for a band like this to be playing. Small, narrow and slightly dingy with a low stage. It’s hard to imagine it ever having been a club and it clearly suits the live atmosphere better than the all-night party environment desired by weekend electro-house enthusiasts, especially with mega-clubs Digital and Life just a brief stagger away.
It takes a couple of songs before there is any movement in the crowd and the guy in front of us obviously saw this as the perfect opportunity to take loads of photos on his iPad, temporarily blocking the view and also making us wonder what has become of punk rock.
‘Insufficient Fare’ gets the room excited, the coats start coming off and the defensive forearm block is utilised by people almost as far back as the bar to stop them being clobbered by the pit-goers.
Cerebral Ballzy are fast, energetic and, well, ballsy and they thrash their way through their short, punchy songs with a real “fuck you” attitude that comes as no surprise since there is a strong first-wave punk influence in their music. Vocalist Honor Titus even sounds a little bit like Crass’ Steve Ignorant on small parts of their record. However, tonight that isn’t so apparent, in fact the sound isn’t great at all and the vocals are drowned out by the band during most of the set.
The crowd isn’t made up of the usual faces we see at Brighton hardcore and punk shows, and we believe this may be a result of NME‘s interest in the band exposing them to a wider audience than usual. Even Vice sing the praises of these guys regularly and we all know that’s a rare occurrence.
The band has been criticised in the past for being slightly gimmicky, as if they were putting on the punk and acting up to what is expected of a band that sound like they do. But with a debut as solid as theirs, our opinion is that they can do what they want and the more they keep shredding, the more we’ll keep listening.
‘Cutting Class’, ‘Drug Myself Dumb’ and ‘Don’t Tell Me What To Do’ all get a wild reaction and they finish the set. We notice that they hadn’t played ‘Junkie For Her’ or ‘Anthem’, two songs that we really expected to hear tonight. The lights come up, the DJ brings a track in and everybody leaves.
We aren’t completely certain of how true this is, but a source of ours (yes, SOURCE’s source) says the band did return to the stage a minute or two later, as if to play an encore, and vanished backstage quickly when they realised the room was almost completely empty. Maybe they were just coming back to grab their beers or collect some gear but we are told there was a definite awkwardness about the situation. Considering their songs are only about two minutes long and they are meant to be a spit-in-your-face-and-then-stick-a-skateboard-through-your-TV punk band, it seems odd that would even be doing an encore. We may never know.
Also, did anyone else think the band looked exactly like the cast of The Warriors tonight?
Bermuda Triangle, Friday 22nd November 2013
Words by Chris Biggs
Photos by Jason Richardson
