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 carried out beforehand, regardless of being conscious of them for the reason that early ‘90s, when the well-deserved vital buzz round their debut LP !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!! was at a fever pitch. As such, we obtained a career-spanning, hour-long set with !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!! being essentially 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 transferring to Epitaph) Info Freeway Revisited, and this album together with their subsequent ones had been nicely represented on this night with “Woman 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 way of 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, unimaginable 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 means Lux Inside of The Cramps used to (i.e., by swallowing it complete). Whereas this seems like a COVID-era nightmare (state of affairs lol), it’s fortunately harmless enjoyable now, years after the very fact.
Regardless of all this pleasure, although, it was the !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!! materials that STILL thrilled essentially the most and obtained essentially the most applause, notably the wonderfully-titled (frequent with this band) “Born Toulouse-Latrec,” “Tail Crush,” and “Let’s Gown Up the Bare Fact.”
Since there was one other occasion scheduled later that evening, they sadly needed to hustle off the stage. Nonetheless, they managed to come back 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 nicely have written it. Oi!
Fortunately, New Bomb Turks introduced alongside Seattle’s The Drowns as most important assist 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 come back. And good on them for taking an explicitly anti-fascist and anti-racist stand in direction of the tip of their set.
Locals Disket opened the invoice with a really melodic set of ‘77 model 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.
