While we lamented the death of the sub-£7 pint and considered the risk/reward of hauling our aging backs into the mosh pits, Welsh maverick sextet, The Blackout jumped around the stage like it’s still 2009, swirling microphones and chanting, “We are the children of the night, we are the children.” Maybe if we scream it back loud enough, it will come true. Manifesting is all the rage these days, right?
The Wasn’t it. Was it? Tour (A convoluted nod to The Blackout’s last tour—This is it. Is it? In turn—stay with me here—based on Michael Jackson’s famous This Is It Tour, featured a revolving cast of regional support acts. At the Kentish Town Forum in London, it was the turn of Brummie four-piece Fangs Out, who made a valiant attempt to warm up an early doors crowd with a fast-paced cruise through midlands hardcore.
“Bands like us don’t get to play places like this to people like you,” vocalist Mikey White swooned. People like this may have been a mix of too cool or too sober to move in any meaningful way that early on in the night until a room-split call and response to “Old Lows” perked everyone up a bit. “Sabbath Town” from last year’s EP, The Humour In Hell, also got heads nodding, providing an insight into this band’s love for their hometown and its undeniable, historically significant music scene.
Emerging on stage to a track by The Prodigy, Dead Pony started on the front foot with big riffs and buckets of self-assured energy from singer Anna Shields. “23, Never Me” went down a treat, but Shields was too into her rhythm to notice the mosh pit opening up as she stalked around the stage, supplying zestful vocals with impressive presence. Dead Pony are braced to release their debut LP, Ignore This, on Apr. 5, and are working hard to ensure that challenge doesn’t go unheard, already hungrily climbing the pre-sale charts.
For a tour with only five shows over six days, this nostalgic jaunt across the UK hasn’t been altogether smooth sailing for The Blackout, with vocalist Gavin Butler having ruptured his Achilles tendon on the very first night in Manchester, performing from an office chair the following night in Glasgow and then toughing it out in a boot and leaning on his mic stand for the remaining dates. Talk of his pain meds turned inexplicably into a ‘heroin’ chant to which vocalist Sean Smith remarked, “It’s like being at a Libertines gig.”
It’s almost unbelievable that The Blackout haven’t graced a London stage in nine years. The two vocalists still effortlessly bounced off one another. Smith leaping around the stage like an excited five-year-old, complete with signature microphone swinging and sassy hip shaking, pounding through a set compiled with an inherent understanding of what fans love about this band. The checklist of well-loved tracks leaned heavily on 2009’s Best In Town and 2011’s Hope, the latter especially close to hearts, having been made off the back of funding gathered from followers via the now defunct PledgeMusic. Smith talked fondly about this album and the spirit of the initiative. Consequently, the love was in the air as the room belted out every word to the album’s title track before descending into the chaos of “Wolves” and the utterly berserk “I’m A Riot? You’re A Fucking Riot.”
As the whistlestop tour through sentimentality continued, Butler impressively made it down off the stage and onto the barrier, boot and all, during “STFUppercut” and, with the support of crew and crowd, got stuck into a proper good sing-along at close quarters, enthusiasm in no way dampened by his very literal Achilles heel. When it comes to sing-alongs, however, the standout track, not just of The Blackout’s back-catalog but arguably the entire Brit-Rock movement of the late 2000s / early 2010s, is the unmistakable “Save Our Selves.” House lights lifted on the joyfully arm-waving crowd, and all instruments wound down perfectly into an acapella chorus of ‘Woahs,’ calling time on this long-awaited return of Wales’ finest alt-rockers.