Slaves @ the Bristol O2 Academy, Nov 2018 (Jessica Bartolini / Live4ever)
If you had to pick some warm-up music for Kent’s finest, the positively veteran punk rockers Slaves, then it’s a reasonable assumption that pop ‘classics’ from twenty years ago wouldn’t be your first port of call.
Yet the sight of the testosterone fuelled crowd going nuts for the Weather Girls’ It’s Raining Men sets the tone for the night (November 20th); passionate but dripping with irony.
Opening with their now infamous cover of Skepta’s Shutdown, said crowd take things up a gear. For follow-up Sockets the venue is literally shaking, virtually all 2000 punters rocking all floors of the building. In their relatively short career, the twosome have built up a fiercely loyal crowd and singer/drummer Isaac Holman has them eating out the palm of his hand for the entire set.
A born showman, any request for the crowd to sing is taken up with relish. He regales the crowd with a tale of when the band first started out and questions were asked about their somewhat limited instrumentation, leading to a chant-then-performance of Fuck The Hi-Hat. Minutes later, he encourages hugs all round, insisting that even security hug some people from the front row, and then proceeds to pull two fans up on to the stage to dance during Cut And Run. Later still, before a fully acoustic version of Photo Opportunity, Holman demands that the crowd not reach for their camera phones, even going so far as to call someone out for doing just that during the course of the song.
Having such a charmer fronting the band is a vital weapon in their arsenal. Consisting only of Holman and partner in crime Laurie Vincent covering the length and breadth of the stage armed only with guitar, chords and volume, what they are able to do with such a limited amount of tricks is impressive.
But most of the tricks aren’t necessary; Slaves’ sound is one of such brutal power that it overwhelms their stage presence; Sugar Coated Bitter Truth is replicated in all its fuzzy electric glory, and the out-and-out punk blast of Where’s Your Car Debbie? manages to both reiterate their principles and show us how far they have come. The newer cuts from Acts Of Fear And Love have more intricate melodies and are generally more polished than what went before, but without losing the vitality, Chokehold being the best example of their new anthemic offerings.
Their USP has its limitations, and having played the game for a while now the boys know not to overdo it. Each song is a punch to the gut, without once going into wig-out territory. It’s an excellent example of restraint and control. It’s quite a short gig, the duo only playing for around an hour but, given the effort they put in (Holman in particular is something of an iron man), very few could leave the gig feeling short-changed.
It’s a perfectly judged visceral punk odyssey.