Battling with the stretched attention span of a Saturday night Shoreditch crowd, Play Dead, Early Morning and Yowl, showcased the depths they hide under waves of high-impact noise. 

A quick tempo change from the bitter cold Shoreditch streets, The Old Blue Last’s bar bustled with an eclectic mix of Londoners jitterbugging and head bobbing to anything from Michael Jackson to Eminem. Older couples spun, pints in hand, and younger friend groups collided with one another in a collective cluster of writhing bodies, already at full blast before the shows even began. I sat down with a drink to wait for the East London Block Party to start, an Xmas extravaganza featuring a number of punk-adjacent bands and a downstairs DJ set. 

After a while I followed a flurry of fashionable youths, stumbling their way up to the contained venue of the reputedly Shakespeare-possessed East End haunt, a venue noted for being the first purpose built theatre since the Roman Era. My sense of timing was, as it always seems to be, incorrigible as I arrived an hour earlier than the set times due to my affinity for mistakenly perceiving military time. 

The near-empty venue felt jarring in comparison to the booming crowd downstairs. This relative quiet quickly changed when the first act, Play Dead, took to the stage switching silence for a tidal wave of sound, summoning people from the depths. They effortlessly played with tempo changes, adding a level of experimentation by discreetly speeding up only to drop down to match their vocalist Joe Blair’s lulling speak-singing style. The South London trio looked comfortable on stage as Blair recited Gen-Z grievances, surprising the crowd, momentarily, with syncopated screams as bassist Ollie Clarke chimed in. 

Despite their rhythm fluctuating from a ska-like swing to classically rendered punk, a large contingent of the crowd remained collected at the bar on the opposite end of the venue and regarded their movements on stage with some emotional distance. 

This tension with the crowd continued into The Early Mornings’ set, as hecklers screamed “play Wonderwall,” while vocalist Annie Leader struggled with the mic’s initial calibration, her witty lyrics flatlining underneath the drums’ driving beat. The three-piece, Manchester-native band did manage to collect themselves during their compellingly catchy tune ‘Love’s Not Hard’ with some incredible riffs coming from Leader’s guitar. Complimented by Danny Shannon’s driving bass line, engaging the crowd with an instantly recognisable pattern made up of several short pairings of quick up-down strokes looped throughout the song. 

The contagious nature of their collected riffs converted hecklers into head-bobbing minions as some even screamed their recognisable patterns back at the stage. Tension continued to bubble, however, as the crowd floated between the upstairs venue and the downstairs DJ set throughout. 

The low-buzz in the room shifted the moment Yowl took to the stage, their melancholic lyrics and contained rage spilled out from frontman Gabriel Byrde’s distorted vocals and pushed through a wave of bleary eyed youths to reanimate the semi-detached crowd. It’s no surprise they were nominated DIY’s Class of 2019, this is a band that know who they are and aren’t afraid to show it, communicating with one another through body language and unified passion. 

The excitement shared between the 5-piece band from Peckham was palpable as they played songs from their newest LP ‘Milksick,’ alongside older material from previous EPs. ‘Virile Crocodile Sweat’ was an obvious crowd pleaser, with Yowl playing it while facing each other in a wriggling mess of instruments and adrenaline. 

The bar at the back of the venue stood empty from expectant top-ups as electrified listeners danced alongside the band, Yowl remaining unaffected by their presence with enjoyment spilling from their bodies and ramped up instruments. 

The use of two mics by Byrde, one exhibiting the depth and breadth of his natural voice’s low rumble and another bringing a falsetto-like depersonalised growl through the use of heavy distortion created an abundance of phonetic space during ‘The Farmer’s Big Spade’. The lines from this cut, “Here lies Floyd, flexing his milksick muscles,” were the source inspiration for the album’s title and are typical of Yowl’s witty, anxiety ridden songs. Musically these cowboy poetic ramblings metamorphosed into proto-punk confessions, ending the night on a high with a crowd fully drilled into place. 

As I made my way slowly out of the venue through beer-soaked steps, I squeezed past a crowd of patrons dancing to a mix of house classics – from Crystal Waters’ ‘Gypsy Woman’ to Inner City’s ‘Good Life’ and even Technotronic’s ‘Pump up the Jam’. I pushed through the double doors guarded by lime-green covered security into animated streets reflecting on the regular struggle represented by the bands of the evening fighting these recognisable classics and an abundance of potential Saturday night pursuits. I’d say, in the end, the live stuff won out.