More than once during their barnstorming performance this weekend, Bobby Vylan, vocalist with Bob Vylan proclaimed from the stage of Birmingham’s O2 Institute that “We are the cutest band in punk rock. The friendliest band in rock’n’roll. The most important band in Great Britain”. He might just have been right.
Bobby and his drumming buddy, Bobbie Vylan (in a world of celebrity-botherers Bobby and Bobbie like to keep things anonymous) certainly have the songs; they’ve definitely built up a rapport with their fans and stay long after the house lights come up to chat, sign merchandise and have their photos taken; and they’re both pretty easy on the eye. They even get personalised friendship bracelets tossed out of the crowd and onto the stage after a blistering take on “Right Here”, admitting “That’s real boy band shit!”.
It was always going to be a lively show on Sunday evening. Both support bands, the howling Clt Drp and the incendiary Hyphen got plenty of love from a seriously age-diverse audience, which had teenagers giving off first gig vibes but getting into the spirit of things alongside a fair few who must have retirement well within their sights. Everybody seemed to be shaking a leg though, with mosh pits opening up again and again and Bobby even getting passed around the crowd almost back to the bar when he stage-dived onto a bed of upstretched hands during “Ring the Alarm”. Sedate and demure was not how things went at all.
Starting off with a bit of on-stage light stretching and yoga to some blistering metal riffage, it wasn’t long before Bob Vylan were right in the zone and owning it for all they were worth. By the time they’d launched into “Reign”, Bobby was already climbing on the stage monitors and whipping the crowd into a frenzy. This was soon followed by “Get Yourself a Gun”, “Dream Big” and “He’s a Man” from new album, Humble as the Sun, which saw no let-up in the stalls, as billows of dry ice swept out from the stage and the audience barked the lyrics to every song back at the band.
For “Northern Line”, those standing in the audience brought about total mosh madness while the band let off fountains of KISS-style fireworks during “Wicked and Bad” with Bobby howling “Let’s go and dig up Maggie’s grave”. “Pretty Songs” even got a mass audience singalong until things exploded into mayhem with the cry of “I’d rather fight!”.
As the gig began to wind down to its final conclusion, the Bobs took a request and laid into the 808 State-sampling “Take That” with its bomb-dropping beats and howling refrain of “for the rich, rules get bent” before sliding into the Black Sabbath riffage of “The Delicate Nature”. However, it was inevitably the raucous “We Live Here” and the visceral “Hunger Games” that brought things to a close, as sweat poured down the walls and the audience headed towards the doors with “You are more than your take-home pay. You are going through Hell but keep going” ringing in their ears.
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