Live Review - Then Comes Silence and Agent Side Grinder at Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, 10th January 2024

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.

                               A rare shot of Hugo Zombie standing still enough for a photo

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 28^th at La Belle Angele are available here.

Bandcamp links:  Agent Side Grinder    Then Comes Silence