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Palace Theatre, Bridgwater,
Saturday 9th November 2024
Review and photos – Rob Wilkins
The last few weeks have been full on with gigs and just the night before we had been at the rather genteel Phoenix theatre in Exeter for the silliness and escapism of Punk Rock Factory, but tonight we battled through the crowds assembling for one of the spectacular Bridgwater Carnival evenings for something a lot more intense!
Tonight the Palace Theatre is playing host to a double header as the gig is followed by a club night, so we are queueing outside VERY early to ensure we catch the first support act. Entering the old theatre is an odd experience (and a taste of things to come) as there are no photo passes and we are soon inside a land of varying levels, nightclub lighting, and VERY sticky carpets!
Straight into the photo pit for Mother Vulture and again, the venue seems unready as four of us crowd unchecked into a tiny pity still full of stage fittings and trip hazard cables.
That is all soon forgotten though as Bristol’s Mother Vulture rips through one of their sets of insane energy, raw excitement, and sheer punk power. I have seen these guys more than a few times now and would say that tonight’s show stood out for being one of the tightest sets musically I have seen from them whilst also being one of the least OTT in terms of “shock” value as nobody climbed, dived off or performed on any surface other than the stage! That gave me the chance to really appreciate the astonishing variety of tones that guitarist Brodie Maguire wrings from his beautiful, pink semi-acoustic Gretsch, the sheer driving force of rhythm section Chris Simpson and Matt West, and the quite insane range of vocalist Georgi Valentine.
The set features the sheer class of already released material including “Rabbit Hole”, “Honey”, “Go Big or Go Home” and “Mr. Jones” but also features a brand new song called “Phoenix” that shows a real progress and hints at some superb new offerings around the corner. They even manage to get a mosh formed as the crowd builds up! As always I end the set utterly exhausted and anticipating the next opportunity to dive down that “Rabbit Hole” to see one of the most incendiary live bands around.
The meat in the sandwich tonight came from further afield having joined the bill all the way from Sheffield as Blackgold made the most of the challenging lighting with anonymous masks and mostly dark, monogrammed outfits.
This was music to challenge me from the rap and hip-hop genres that I genuinely have never reviewed and rarely find myself listening to, so it is hard to review the actual material! From the opener “It’s Art” right through to the reverberations of “Boogeyman” I focus on the energy and delivery and it is simply jaw-dropping. En route through the set, we take a side step to some Cypress Hill at which point another mask joins them on stage, behind which lurks Skindred frontman Benji Webbe for “I Ain’t Going Out Like That” and “Insane in the Brain”. The energy on stage and off feed off each other. This is what music should be as it finds creases and unexplored regions of the brain, settles there, finds a home, and draws from you as you find a new alternate reality for a while.
Of course, these two bands almost merge into what makes Skindred so special and popular as they are the ultimate cross-over band with a style that is unique, and, to me, in Benji Webbe, they have the best frontman in the business.
There are two Skindreds for me. There is the arena/festival Skindred where Benji allows himself free reign to riff and MC the evening with seemingly off-the-cuff speeches and crowd interaction. Then there is tonight’s Skindred where the band are unstoppable and there is barely time to take a breath. And this one is my favourite. The one where every song increases the energy in the room and at the end of the set leaves the attendees battered and bruised, sweat dripping off the walls, and one mass of movement and voices. The issue with that is that the venue seems utterly unprepared for that! No security whatsoever to manage the crowd surfers or help with a medical issue and the potential for problems to escalate unmanaged. That isn’t the band’s issue though, but if the venue wants to put on these kinds of evenings they REALLY need to sort this out with staffing and appropriate training.
Having got that off my chest, in a way the danger close to the surface adds to the experience and I am often one to complain that music now is sterile and this is FAR from the case tonight.
From the first hit of “Set Fazers”, with Benji appearing on a balcony above the crowd, this is a band that have honed their craft through an incredible 25 years of being on stage together. Whilst promoting the “Smile” album, the setlist has every one of my favourite Skindred tracks as it features “Doom Riff”, “Rat Race” (with a sly insert of “Wonderwall”), “That’s My Jam” (introduced with the most ridiculous Benji Webbe monologue yet), “Kill the Power”, “Nobody”, “Gimme that Boom” and of course the “Newport Helicopter” for the final excess that wrings every drop of energy from the crowd during “Warning”.
Showing how Skindred merges styles there is also the reggae of “L.O.V.E. (Smile Please)” as a moment of relative calm along with the segued into “This Appointed Love” and then “If I Could” to use the frenzy to bring more of the new material into the set (clever set management as I have been to gigs where the urge to showcase the new has led to a drop in intensity as people still become familiar. Here it just works).
Covers also litter the set to add more variety with a snippet of Van Halen’s “Jump”, complete with keyboard, and then the entirety of Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue” to prepare for that swirl of clothing and sweat that defines every Skindred show.
As “Nobody Does it Better” sees the lights on and the crowd filters out I am drained and full of adrenaline and cannot disagree. Another Skindred show ticked off, and another night of memories created.
