Just ten days into the New Year and already Scotland was hosting what looks likely to be one of the stand-out gigs of 2024, the very welcome return of the self-styled “Swedish captains of post-punk”, bringing their infectious gothic darkwave groove to the capital for the first time since a pre-pandemic double bill with 1919 in July 2019 in the atmospheric arched vault of Bannerman’s bar in the spooky Old Town.
This year’s gig took place just around the corner at the
equally cool subterranean venue Cabaret Voltaire, with gig-goers having to find
a drizzly path through the patrons of Auld Reekie's Ghost Hunter tours led by
hyperbole-obsessed ‘resting’ actors accompanying their gullible charges to
Edinburgh’s allegedly hidden underground ghost town.
The name of the Cabaret Voltaire venue could hardly be more
appropriate for the other band on an enterprising bill promoted by London’s
Reptile club night, fellow Swedes Agent Side Grinder, whose 80’s influenced electro
post-punk is partially indebted spiritually to the Sheffield band of the same
name, who themselves were named after a short-lived Dadaist cabaret club in
Zurich over a century ago.
Although representing very different musical styles, the two
bands on show have much in common, apart from being based in Stockholm: both
are at the more melodic end of their genre, both have not only survived but
thrived after multiple line-up changes, and recently TCS figurehead Alex
Svenson played bass on ASG’s 2023 album Jack Vegas.
Agent Side Grinder, Edinburgh, 2024. L-R Peter Fristedt, Emanuel Åström, Johan Lange,
On this occasion, both bands were billed to play a full hour
set, with ASG on first, and they won over an initially somewhat hesitant crowd
with a varied set which spanned their career, from earlier hits like Wolf
Hour to tracks from the last album, for which Svenson joined them on what
became a very cramped stage, with the slow-burning Madeleine a highlight
from this section of the set. Traditional crowd-pleaser Giants Fall also
went down well, as the audience slowly warmed to an always eclectic increasingly
EBM dancefloor-oriented retro synthwave set.
Visually, Emanuel Åström remains the focus, half-Stiv Bators half-Andy McCluskey as he writhes around the mike stand and dances his way through the set in front of the band’s A/X logo, with founder member Johan Lange providing strong backing vocals and some wonderful old school analogue synth sounds alongside fellow stalwart Peter Fristedt, looking ever more like the mad professor, frantically seeking out the right tape loop from his box of tricks in the sound laboratory and constantly twiddling knobs and dials to tweak the ASG sound. After a brief encore, the band and their equipment left the small stage to be replaced by that rarity for darkwave bands, a drumkit, along with the usual pedalboard, only serving to accentuate the two very different strands which are pre-eminent in modern gothic culture.
Alex Svenson joins Agent Side Grinder on stage, Edinburgh 2024
With a career stretching back to 2012 and soon to release
their seventh studio album, Then Comes
Silence exude a solid dark professionalism, despite their relatively recent
reduction to a three-piece, from the opening chord of a set which features
songs judiciously selected from their last four albums, but all with the same
energy and melody which has seen them rise to the very top of the current
scene.
Set-opener Tickets To Funerals from the most recent
album Hunger is a strong statement of intent with guitarist Hugo
Zombie’s chugging riffs a perfect counterpoint to Svenson’s dusky vocal, with
behatted drummer Jonas Fransson laying down a powerful beat behind them. Any
sound mix issues were sorted quickly during the next two songs, Flashing Pangs of Love (from 2017’s Blood)
and Apocalypse Flare (on 2020 album Machine), in time for the
first highlight of the set, Good Friday from the former release,
Svenson’s powerful and moving paean to his late father, with Zombie absolutely
nailing the solo after pummelling and pirouetting through the opening sections
of the song in his own unique style, which is typical of the band’s obvious
enjoyment of being back on stage again.
Then Comes Silence on stage in Edinburgh, 2024 L-R Alex Svenson. Jonas Fransson, Hugo Zombie
As a trio, the band now has a raw power and energy in a live
setting which is in contrast with their increasingly sleek critically-acclaimed
studio releases, and the simple, descending dark punk riff of the evening’s next song, She
Loves The Night (from 2015’s Nyctophilian) shows this to full pulverising effect.
Whilst some songs – Strange Kicks, and Dark End,
for example – do lose some of their subtlety with the slimmed-down line-up, others
have gained in effect from the more simplified structure, such as Rise To
The Bait, the first song where the audience really cuts free and the first
half-dozen rows of a very decent turnout for a wet midweek January evening
become a lively two-step throng.
The next song, the “whisper to a scream” classic Mercury (from Blood) builds slowly to an epic impassioned crescendo from the peerless Svenson, with the sole guitar again providing a wonderful tonal range and the uplifting finale echoing round the walls of the subterranean chamber to a rapturous response. Predictably, the band has saved some of their best-known classics for the end, with Strangers and Animals from Nyctophilian book-ending a typically excoriating version of Blood’s The Rest Will Follow, with Fransson’s frenetic punky drumming dominating once more, leaving crowd and band exhausted yet fully sated, with the latter promising to return soon. The double headliner mini-tour now moves on to Manchester, Bristol and London (Saturday), and anyone within travelling distance is strongly encouraged to attend.
Reptile’s next Scottish show at the end of next month, also
to be held in Edinburgh, is an even more eclectically impressive bill,
featuring local 80’s goth punk stalwarts Twisted Nerve, now stretching their infamous
Five Minutes Of Fame into a fifth decade, twenty-first century Italian
synthwave darlings Ash Code, with 90’s French gothic legends Corpus Delicti
topping the bill, all for a mere twenty quid. Tickets for the show on Feb 28th
at La Belle Angele are available here.
Bandcamp links: Agent Side Grinder Then Comes Silence
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