A thrilling evening of high volume, high energy, grungy rock prevailed at Brighton’s Haunt the other week, with Our Girl (who we’re sorry we missed) and a great set from Big Society before Broken Hands (more like broken stage, broken drums, judging by the way they thrashed about and how hard they hit) further warmed up the audience. Even though the audio was a little off to start, you couldn’t mistake their energy and tuneful delivery.
Finally, Brighton and Newcastle’s Demob Happy, a band named in NME’s ‘50 New Bands Set To Storm 2015’ list, certainly lived up to expectations during their headline slot. It was the second time we’d seen them in as much as a week. They had a big crowd at the Dome Studio for SPECTRUM’s Record Store Day event, but probably not the crowd (or the time of day) that this band’s aspirations deserves.
The softly spoken long-haired foursome were in their element delivering high-energy riffs and hard hitting drums in a small but buzzing venue. “It’s packed in here, you bastards,” said frontman Matt Marcantonio, smiling to what looked like a new era of young grunge kids in DMs who were pressed against the stage and crammed all the way to the merchandise stalls at the back. Many of them looked too young to have been going to gigs in the 90s, but it sure looked like there had been an influence.
From the off, the scratchy guitars and wistful rhythmic lyrics of ‘Suffer You’ announced they’d arrived, although it did follow several confusing minutes of the band warming up while Matt searched for something he’d lost on stage.
Without fail, every song that followed got the crowd going more and more, even when they announced a new song that many people can’t have heard before. Their debut single ‘Succubus’, which received huge acclaim when it was released last year, prompted the crowd into a raucous mosh, crowd surfers ‘n’ all. They ended on high spirits with ‘Young And Numb’, its lyrics ringing true for this audience. One woman perched herself on the front of the stage face-to-face, almost nose-to-nose, with a happily distracted frontman trying to keep his mind on the job. When the song ended on a crescendo the drummer and guitarist threw themselves into the welcoming and eager crowd for a bit of the kinetic energy they’d instigated.
After they left, cries of “one more song” didn’t bring them back, but you can tell that their local following has just got a little bit bigger for next time.
The Haunt, Friday 24th April 2015
Words and photos by Fran Moore
