The Ghost Of A Thousand

Climbing the Barfly stairs at 8.30pm on a Wednesday night, it’s easy to assume you’re heading for an empty room, just a couple of early arrivers nodding gently along to the first band of the night.

Bollocks to that, sir. This is a Kerrang! show, with a rotating line-up on a week-long tour, so it’s no wonder that this shitty, L-shaped hole is already crammed full of sweaty teens. Flood Of Red - read: latest screamo pretty boys - are bouncing around the stage, and there’s only a tiny corner of space beyond the bar.

Slotted in, starting to feel at home, early decisions prove bigoted. Flood Of Red may find themselves in a tired genre, but they’re doing everything in their power to smash their way to the top of it. Singer Jordan Spiers spends too much time flicking hair from his eyes, but, begorrah, he has a good wail on him, and he’s captivating to watch as he careers around the stage. Flood Of Red’s real secret weapon, though, is guitarist Calum Doris, who just doesn’t fit in at all. Surrounded by fashionable chaps with clever haircuts, Calum’s bald as a coot; a terrifying, muscular presence, bobbing away in the background. If he nutted you mid-strum, you’d stay down. In purely aesthetic terms, he adds that extra, necessary, visceral edge to Flood Of Red’s sound.

But really and truly, we’re here to see The Ghost Of A Thousand (no, not tonight’s headliners Zico Chain, so don’t linger if you’re hoping for a review of them). Roaring out of the south of England, the Gallows comparisons are going to be unavoidable, but this lot deserve their very own personal parking space in your affections. Tom Lacey is a gentle-looking soul, and his big ginger mop looks like a beehive, but you wouldn’t mess with him when he’s in full flow. Hell no.

The band’s faces are set into grimaces, powering through an onslaught of metal riffs that Poison The Well would be proud of, Tom continually ordering the kids into a circle pit that takes up half the room. Yes, that’s right - in the Barfly. The pit divides the young from the old, but everyone’s lapping this up, from the handful of Flood Of Red kids that bothered to stick around, to the forty-somethings propping up the bar.

Mini-crowd surfs carry fans about two yards before they’re flung back into the melee, bashed about to ‘Bored Of Math’ like there’s no tomorrow. “Punk rock needs you again / Generation X is dead.” That’s the call to arms, the warning siren for the arrival of a new generation of British punk - so either batten down the hatches or join up. One glimpse of this lot, and the latter will be your response, guaranteed.