Delivering dirty, gritty punk, Leeds’ own Goatspeed made for an appropriate choice of opening act. But despite performing on the floor in front of the stage and giving it a hundred per cent, they failed to ignite. The fat bodybuilder with a shaven-head and a bandana who fronted the band lacked charisma or any obvious appeal and detracted from the overall effect. Pity, because they were certainly solid enough.
It was only when Trash Talk took to the stage that things really got going: a headline act in their own right on any other night, they went from 0-60 in a split second, going full throttle from the moment they struck the first chord. The place was packed and they attacked their instruments with unflinching ferocity, as if they were trying to see just how quickly they could get through the material. Selecting highlights from a set that offered blast after blast of high-octane hardcore energy is as close to impossible as it is pointless, and as the band tore through ‘Dig’, ‘Envy’ and ‘Worthless Nights,’ front man Lee Spielman (rather resembling Ross Noble) tears through the crowd like a whirlwind.
The chances are that the set-list for OFF! probably took longer to write than to perform. Four sheets of A4 taped together, it was practically a scroll, and OFF! didn’t disappoint in giving the crowd a lot of bang for their bucks. Not that the punters showed their enthusiasm with nearly as much stage-diving or moshing as one might have expected in the presence of punk deity: let’s face it, if ever there was a US punk supergroup, it’s OFF! Still, the one guy who did try it didn’t get much support, launching himself from the stage and sinking very quickly into the first three rows. Most of those down the front were simply packed in too tight to move much, and restricted their exuberance to fist-waving and hard nodding.
Steven McDonald might be in his mid forties and Keith Morris has now reached the rip old age of 56, his scalp emerging through the hole in his dreads, but they’re still angry, nihilistic and driven, and their full-force energy and stamina puts the majority of young pretender punk acts to shame. Green Day and the MTV / Kerrang! Punk acts aren’t worth a drop of these guys’ sweat, and what’s especially telling is the lack of theatre and the ordinary Joe clothes OFF! are decked out in. No hairdos, no guyliner, no trappings of style: Keith’s wearing a Ramones T and black jeans, and they’re just telling it like it is – and in very short, fast bursts.
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Hurtling through a good chunk of the album and a fair few some selected cuts from their first four functionally-titled EPs, OFF! don’t piss about. There’s no posing, no pausing to towel off or tune up, and only a little chat from the opening salvo of ‘Panic Attack’ to the closing blast of ‘Fuck People’ and ‘Toxic Box’. No two ways about it, this is authentic, pissed off hardcore punk, the way it’s supposed to be – and if anyone should know, it’s the four guys on stage: they practically invented it.
They encore with a trio of tracks all taken from the first EP - ‘Black Thoughts’‘Darkness’ and ‘Upside Down’ - played back to back, and I pity anyone who thought they might have time for a toilet break before the encore, ‘cause they’d have missed it all.
And with that, OFF! were off, and we all left happy. Put simply, OFF! delivered and proved beyond a shadow of doubt that punk is anything but a spent force.
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