Bad Brains

With tickets priced at £20, it would appear that the cider punx of London town aren’t going to be descending en masse onto Tottenham Court Road to see one of the few remaining old-school punk bands around who haven’t turned into a hideous parody of themselves. But then again, Bad Brains’ return to the capital after more than a few years away – and with the original lineup – was always going to be an event.

But first, the only support act of the night, Sonic Boom Six, take the stage. A few years ago, if they’d been offered a Bad Brains support slot they might have filled their 30-minute set with as many facsimiles of BB songs as they could concoct but tonight, on the eve of the release of their second album, they show themselves to be a startlingly mature and assured live band who will soon be annihilating stages this size on a nightly basis. As Barney’s basslines edge towards a dubby thickness, they manage to rein in any tendencies they may have to veer to closely to either dub or ska or hip-hop or punk, instead teetering on the knife-edge between several genres at once and pulling their balancing trick off with aplomb. It’s a measure of how far they’ve developed in the last two years that, even though the set is spattered with new tunes such as the sophisticated neon punk-pop of ‘While You Were Sleeping’ and the jagged, juddering ‘Meanwhile Back In The Real World’, the older ‘Piggy In The Middle’ and an especially ferocious ‘Apathy Begins At Home’ are greeted like old favourites from a crowd that shouts its approval louder and louder after each song. And, as Laila prowls around, they begin to look truly comfortable in such a setting, and the one abiding feeling at the end of the set is this: their time is now.

But let’s be perfectly honest, very little could hope to distract any attention away from Bad Brains. An hour before going onstage, HR is sitting practically motionless in his dressing room, head shrouded in what appears to be a blue towel and wearing an alarmingly naff pair of white sunglasses. Then, when he does walk onto the Astoria’s stage to a hugely warm welcome, he’s still wearing the ridiculous headgear and carrying his guitar case and bag of spares as if he doesn’t have a full road crew to attend to this. But, funnily enough, had some indie-fop done this they’d probably have been derided as being attempting to affect some common-man airs and graces, but when HR does it it’s accepted as being almost totally natural, just one of his foibles. And then, strumming his guitar with only his thumb, he leads the Brains through a riotous hardcore set.

To his right, Dr Know’s constant riffing still sounds fresh and raw even after two decades of imitators have turned hardcore into fashion shorthand for ‘wears two belts and tight jeans’. Ripping through ‘Big Takeover’ and ‘I Against I’, his flailing dreadlocks provide an interesting contrast to HR’s stage moves that consist of, um, walking backwards after each song and bowing to the crowd. The fact is, it doesn’t matter that HR doesn’t engage with the crowd except to ask how they are being launching into ‘Banned In DC’, because bassist Daryl Jenifer’s fat, seductive basslines during the few reggae songs they play (notably ‘I Luv I Jah’) make everyone so deliriously happy that BB could play a set composed solely of readings from Rastafarian scriptures and the crowd would still combust in sheer pleasure.

But does it matter that they’re playing to a purely partisan crowd? Of course it doesn’t. Does it matter that they’re not chucking themselves around the stage with abandon? Considering HR’s 51, it’s safe to say no. The strength of feeling that still resides with many hardcore fans towards BB means that tonight is simply a celebration of the fact that they exist and haven’t turned into a ridiculous commercial machine (well, we hope…). And when you boil it down, pumping out brutal hardcore through the Astoria’s PA on a Tuesday night is fucking unbeatable.

Photo: Zac Slack