New Bomb Turks
New Bomb Turks, The Drowns, Disket
New Bomb Turks @ The Meadows, Brooklyn, US, August 1, 2025,
Aug 03, 2025
Pictures by Matthew Berlyant
Net Unique
Though Columbus, Ohio’s long-running New Bomb Turks have been a band for thirty-five years now, forming in 1990, they haven’t made a studio album since 2002’s wonderfully-titled The Night time Earlier than the Day the Earth Stood Nonetheless. That stated, they do nonetheless sporadically tour, and I used that as a possibility to see them, one thing I’d by no means executed beforehand, regardless of being conscious of them for the reason that early ‘90s, when the well-deserved essential buzz round their debut LP !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!! was at a fever pitch. As such, we received a career-spanning, hour-long set with !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!! being probably the most represented of their seven albums.
The set opener “Id Slips In,” nevertheless, was from their second album (and final earlier than Crypt earlier than shifting to Epitaph) Info Freeway Revisited, and this album together with their subsequent ones had been properly represented on this night with “Lady Can Assist It,” “Level A to Level Clean” and set nearer, an epic model of “Defiled” that at one level even featured singer Eric Davidson going by the viewers after which a lot of the viewers sitting down (at his request) earlier than the tune climaxed to its finish. And although the three-piece band stirs up fairly a racket, dominated by guitarist Jim Weber’s screeching Flying V, it’s Davidson who’s unattainable to take your eyes off of.
A wailing banshee with an ear-piercing scream, unbelievable hair, nice lyrics, a voice stolen from some ‘50s hillbilly drunk on moonshine however up to date for the punk period who strikes like a very erratic wind-up toy, his propensity for lighthearted/good-natured grossness translated into onstage antics together with flicking boogers, stuffing cell telephones down his pants, and treating the mic the identical approach Lux Inside of The Cramps used to (i.e., by swallowing it entire). Whereas this appears like a COVID-era nightmare (state of affairs lol), it’s fortunately harmless enjoyable now, years after the actual fact.
Regardless of all this pleasure, although, it was the !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!! materials that STILL thrilled probably the most and received probably the most applause, notably the wonderfully-titled (widespread with this band) “Born Toulouse-Latrec,” “Tail Crush,” and “Let’s Costume Up the Bare Reality.”
Since there was one other occasion scheduled later that evening, they sadly needed to hustle off the stage. Nonetheless, they managed to return again out and play their signature cowl of Wire’s “Mr. Go well with,” a spotlight of their debut album and a model so uniquely their very own that they could as properly have written it. Oi!
Fortunately, New Bomb Turks introduced alongside Seattle’s The Drowns as primary help for this tour. Reminding me of working-class glammy rock and roll-inspired UK punk with a vocalist who’s half Colin McFaull (Cock Sparrer) and half Jake Burns (Stiff Little Fingers), they had been the right warm-up band for what was to return. And good on them for taking an explicitly anti-fascist and anti-racist stand in the direction of the top of their set.
Locals Disket opened the invoice with a really melodic set of ‘77 type punk rock that also retained each ounce of the grit faraway from a lot pop-punk within the final thirty years or so. One tune jogged my memory closely of The Avengers, one other of The Nuns, and by the point you possibly can catch your breath, they had been already off stage. I want I’d caught extra of their set, however they’re a band to look at.
