Bob Vylan | Panic Shack | Child Bookie
O2 Institute, Birmingham
18th November 2023

A genre-defying, politically charged efficiency from London duo Bob Vylan, seamlessly mixing high-energy punk, grime, and rap with a rallying cry for social change.

Child Bookie is the primary act on stage. An ideal warm-up for Bob Vylan with an analogous mix of high-octane rap vocals and heavy nu-metal guitars. The South-East London band have been decided to incite a mosh pit and get the group as warmed up as doable, solely pausing the rapid-fire chaos of the set to throw in an sudden cowl of Radiohead’s Creep.

Welsh 5-piece Panic Shack have been subsequent. A joyfully ramshackle journey by way of indie punk rock with foot-stomping shouts and even some choreographed dance strikes. Though the lyrics are delivered with venom and their music bristles with defiance, they nonetheless are clearly having the time of their lives. As soon as the band strike the ultimate ringing chord of the set, your entire band collapsed to the ground with mock dramatic aptitude.

All the time seeking to shock and entertain, as a substitute of the normal over-the-top stage entrance of bombastic sound and lighting, Bob Vylan arrived on stage calmly and introduced and calmly pronounces/introduced that he likes to start his live shows with some mild stretching and meditation, “and I counsel you do the identical”. Solely then do the lights go into overdrive and the dissonant crunch of an ominous droning? wall of sound drone erupts from the audio system. Vylan then leans right into a ahead fold and a few tricep extensions. Turning round I see a packed Birmingham Institute viewers mimicking their punk-yogi idol, with arms aloft, eyes closed and centring themselves earlier than the chaos. With the alarming music and lights positive to set pulses racing in anticipation, it was a great distance off any yoga class I’d ever been to.

With the band and crowd totally warmed up and chakra aligned, Bob Vylan tear into their first tune, I Heard You Need Your Nation Again. A brilliantly scathing assault on short-sighted anti-multiculturalism. The set is then one biting barrage of punk fury after one other. Seamlessly welding components of grime instrumentation and rap vocals, with guitar-heavy choruses and punk screams of defiance. With one foot firmly planted in rap and the opposite in punk, Bob Vylan straddles each these subcultures with ease. Lyrically, he takes one of the best of each for max influence in successfully calling out injustice, inequality, racism and classism, that are all themes operating by way of the band’s setlist and tackled with eloquent rage.

Solely a two-piece band, Bobby Vylan offered the vocals and the stage presence, and Bobbie Vylan was on the drums offering the highly effective power and triggering the unseen guitars, whose samples shook the constructing to the rafters. In a second of respite, the frontman took a second to proclaim help for the individuals of Palestine and inspired the group to talk up for these with no voice, as a number of Palestinian flags circled by way of the group earlier than touchdown on the stage.

An overwhelmingly charismatic efficiency from a band proper on the frontier of genre-pushing music, whose daring and defiant lyrics are clearly resonating with individuals from far and vast, given the response from the packed-out crowd at O2 Institute.

Bob Vylan: Web site, Fb, Instagram, Twitter
Panic Shack: Web site, Fb, Instagram, Twitter
Child Bookie: Web site, Fb, Instagram, Twitter

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Phrases and photographs by Jack Flynn. You could find extra from him on his authors archive, and @jackflynnphoto on Fb, Twitter, and Instagram in addition to his images web site.