Hardcore in a dive bar

Bruise Control conquer Blondies and Predeceased bring the noise

I don't go to dive bars these days, and I don't generally go further east in London than Brick Lane.

But I really should.

Recently I did both in order to see Manchester punks Bruise Control, whose debut record was one of my favourite albums of 2023, play an electrifying hardcore set in Blondies in Hackney.

In my mind the East End dive bar is London's equivalent of St Vitus in Brooklyn, though rewatching sets by Converge, The Iron Roses and Mutoid Man, the New York venue looks positively arena-like by comparison.

Almost tripping over the drum kit on my entrance, Blondies is both smaller than my local pub and infinitely better decorated, with posters for The Clash, Ramones and Mastodon on its walls, not to mention one for 'SMelvins' (as a doctored flyer would have it).

There's still enough room to 'swing a cat', as the British saying goes, but the proverbial flying feline could easily hit both microphones and bar - the 'stage' being a corner of the venue.

So intimate probably covers it. Before the band's start I was perched on a bar stool listening to support band Predeceased (pictured below) trying to decide what time they should start and then found myself minding a pint for Bruise Control singer Jim Taylor.

Start time decided, Predeceased begin. References to Hüsker Dü and Shellac in the Manchester trio's Spotify biography ensured I got there early to catch their set, though the complexity of their noise rock brought Fugazi or an alt rock Gang of Four more to mind.

A bass sound wrought from girders, call and response vocals between the singer and drummer, and plenty of shouting made for a bracing way to start the evening from a band whose sound was a bit more modern than their Rollins Band and Negative Approach t-shirts might suggest.

Their second album ‘What Do You Do?’ came out in 2023 and they last week released the ‘What Do You Do? (Live)’ EP featuring five of the album’s songs plus one new one.

Bruise Control, however, create controlled chaos out of some seemingly disparate looking elements. Bassist Ru Gilfillan looks like he should be in a particularly brutal technical death metal band, while Niall Griffin wouldn’t be out of place in a 00s landfill indie outfit – which is ironic, seeing as how he mixed and produced the brilliant punk rock of Bruise Control’s debut album Useless for Something. Both of them move in lockstep with drummer Tommy Morris and Jim like some sort of mighty morphing Power Ranger to create something even more powerful than the sum of its parts.

Formed in 2018, the band originally set out to create classic garage punk before evolving into something that bridges the traditional and the experimental, mixing hardcore and melody. Along the way Bruise Control signed to Manchester DIY punk label TNS Records, who put out Useless for Something last year.

On this night, the band are clearly have their next album in mind, with more than half the setlist devoted to new tracks, including the opening ‘Nostalgia’ (“Your nostalgia is slowly killing me”), ‘Existential’ - which tackles “posh boy clubs”, and their latest single ‘No More’, which Jim explains is about “creeps in the bar” as it powers through a cathartic repetition of the title.

The new songs continue the band’s melodic approach to hardcore – with Tommy, Niall and Ru adding backing vocals – and that, combined by the obvious fun they have playing together, makes the unfamiliar tracks seem like your next favourite songs. (They pulled off a similar trick on Useless for Something. Writing lyrics like, “What the fuck has a Tory ever done for you?!” the first line of the album’s first song could have marked them down as hectoring political punks, but the tunes are just too strong for that.)

You also can’t fail to notice frontman Jim. He’s a striking figure with his mutton-chop/moustache facial hair combo, and that’s before he strips down to shorts and Vans for the gig, revealing a target-like ‘Born t’ Lose’ tattoo across his stomach. His kinetic energy lifts the mid-week audience. Dashing through the crowd and back, he starts a mosh pit seemingly by transferring some of his momentum to the crowd. "Thanks for coming out on a Thursday (I wouldn't," Jim quips at one point, though he’s clearly appreciative of everyone that made it through the cold London night).

Having blazed through their setlist there’s still time for one more song and the doomy ‘Come on Down’ is appropriately cut with half a minute of ‘Paranoid’ (not the band’s only nod to Black Sabbath) as Jim once again disappears into the crowd to dash the length of the bar and then right out the door to continue the song from the pavement. Who knows what any passers-by made of that, but it might have given them the sense of what they were missing out on.

The best gigs you leave with a song echoing in your ears. Heading away from Blondies for my two-hour trek home it’s the "fuck Weatherspoons, fuck Priti Patel" refrain of ‘Taxman’. ("You'll never be forgiven - woah woah".)