Gnarwolves And The Smith Street Band: The Ultimate Punk Concert

Though overzealous is a word, more often than not, best used to describe Manchester's venue security, tonight overwhelmed seems far more suitable. Looking to my left I catch the eye of Gorilla's sole bouncer, a towering pillar of order and authority, he grins awkwardly and shrugs sheepishly. Another fan front-flips off the stage. There's no barrier tonight, and as such security has been relegated to the fringes of the crowd, unable to do anything but look on half aghast, half amused at the heaving mass of flailing limbs in front of him. No barrier means no boundaries, something tonight's crowd seems all too happy to take advantage of. This is chaos. This is punk. This is Gnarwolves. This isn't even the headline band.

Billed as a co-headline tour, both Gnarwolves, and Melbourne's Smith Street Band have alternated their headline slot on each date of the tour, with tonight's slot falling to SSB, though watching Gnarwolves, you wouldn't have thought it. Even with the venue only three quarters full, the rapturous regard with which the crowd hold the band more than makes up for the thinner numbers at the back. Tearing through a set of their most loved numbers, it's easy to understand the borderline obsession of their fans; singer Thom's on stage patter both light- hearted and familiar (“Party at that guy's house? Are there booze shops on the way?”) as if the band and audience are close friends. And with some of them, they are; mentioning several of the crowd by name.

That's the beauty of tonight's show. It feels like a DIY house show; like catching Blink 182, or Green Day before all the bullshit. It's contemporary pop-punk done right, with tracks like 'History is Bunk' or 'Melody Has Big Plans' holding their own easily against genre heavyweights like The Movielife or Homegrown. It's an explosive set, and when at one point a human pyramid forms, the security guard makes a fruitless dash towards the moshpit, before resigning himself  to defeat and dejectedly mumbling something in to a radio.

This is as close to punk as you can get in 2015, short of piercing your nose with a safety pin and using piss to spike your mohawk, and let's face it, when you reek of wee, not showering isn't cool. Fortunately Gnarwolves are less 'Leather, Bristles Studs and Acne', and more skateboards and backpacks. And though we weren't convinced by the band's recorded material before tonight, by the end of a set that ends far too soon, they managed to convert a devout atheist, leaving him salivating at the prospect of praying at the alter of Gnar again soon.

“It's great to be back in Scotland,” jokes Smith Street Singer Will Wagner before launching in to the rousing 'Something I Can Hold In My Hand'. The crowd, though seemingly fuller and somewhat unsurprisingly less fervoured than before, push forward, the band segue seamlessly in to 'Surrender'. Though the band seem less angry and somewhat more angsty than Gnarwolves (possibly something to do with the “Will Swap Merch for Weed” sign at the merch desk?) there's no less fire, and no less passion behind their set. Tracks like 'Don't Fuck With Our Dreams' (“This is a Slayer cover!”) and “I Don't Wanna Die Any More” prompting huge singalongs from the crowd. A rare moment of poignancy in an otherwise chaotic cacophony, comes in the form of 'The Arrogance of the Drunk Pedestrian”; a song that tackles both sexism and depression, and builds towards a cathartic and explosive conclusion.

With a set that's built strongly around last year's 'Throw Me in the River' it's understandably heavier and faster than it would have been should it have been built around either of the band's previous records, whilst a noticeable lack of the most recent single 'Wipe That Shit Eating Grin Off Your Punchable Face', written about an Australian politician and his views on immigration, presumably comes from the band wanting to keep politics out of the evening's festivities.

“You tell us to get on stage, and now you're telling us to hurry up, what's going on?” laughs Wagner, before launching in to the eponymous 'Throw Me in the River', and, much like Gnarwolves, the band's set comes to a close far too early, the eleven tracks only serving to whet our appetite and leave us sweaty and blinking in to the blinding house lights. This wasn't a show, it was a sacrifice. Giving yourself up to the unifying nature of a punk gig and becoming bruised and in some cases bloody, but feeling ultimately cleansed and completely humbled.

Words by Dave Beech To find out more about Gnarwolves
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COMMENTS

• Emily Kyne
  Both such solid punk bands, expecting them to keep growing!
• Emily Kyne
  Both such solid punk bands, expecting them to keep growing!