The Blood Brothers

Because how can you not? A friend along for the ride for the first time – smashed sideways on cheap vodka from a nearby watering hole of little expense – is puzzled that DiS not only knows the words but is bloody going for it. We assure her this is normal behaviour, and proceedings roll. Rhymes muddle and mix as drink takes hold and all failings in the PA are forgotten as a slew of winners from albums four and five – Crimes and Young Machetes – are dispatched. A tiny section of the hardcore gripe and moan – there’s no ‘Ambulance Vs Ambulance’, oh boo hoo – but anyone who’s seen The BBs any time over the past two years knows that old shit is just that, and these high-pitched pioneers of spasm-core contortions aren’t ones to stop statuesque, either on stage or in terms of setlists. Fuck you, hardcore, and take your windmill-dancing toss-rag of an admirer with you: we’re here for a party and it’s what we get.

And besides, they open with ‘Cecilia And The Silhouette Saloon’! Thumbs up, quite literally, all round. ‘Trash Flavoured Trash’ keeps the spirits high, and flowing, and ‘Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck’ is the sing-along of choice on the night. We have to turn to said colleague and convince them that, really, love does rhyme with sympathy.

Headaches are fun after such times, and while DiS condones neither the behaviour of knucklehead ballaches in the pit nor the selling of readily available seven-inches for a fiver (we protest with the merch lady and are given a particularly short shrift), we enjoy the dull thud all the way home on the Victoria Line, as echoes of the last hour sink back into a murk through which many lesser bands would never have penetrated. The Blood Brothers are, again, triumphant in the face of initial adversity.

Photograph by Andy Parker