REVIEW: The Damned at Brooklyn Bowl

Follow WHIP Twitter Facebook Instagram

WRITTEN BY: Henry Reising

The kings of gothic punk have returned to Philly.

A night filled with loud rock, soft reflective moments, and an audience that kept banging and moshing until the late hours of the night. The Damned is the pinnacle of what it means to be punk rock. But to get to the king, you first must go through their underlings. 

The first, of two, opening acts was a New York City group, Baby Shakes, bursting in with “Do What You Want,” kicking off the crusade of punk with a cleverly disguised song, sounding like an Elvis B-side mixed with influences of Chuck Berry and surf rock but invoking a deeper invitation to the audience to a night of a lifetime. The audience fully accepts, and immediately Mary Blount’s voice commands the room in “All the Pretty Things,” and “Baby Blue,” the audience head banging to the moderate beat yet thrashing to the same rhythm the lyrics awaken. 

Though that was just the warmup, because next the audience is taken into a hardcore deep dive with the Canadian born band Fucked Up!

When Fucked Up entered the bowling alley stage, the audience felt an instantaneous difference between the laid-back surf rock sounds of Baby Shake to the raw, angry, and symbolic Fucked Up. Opening up with their classic, “David Comes to Life,” loud roars and cheers begin as the circle of the mosh pit gets bigger and bigger, almost consuming the whole audience. 

With that, Fucked Up took the venue, kicking and screaming into the depth of Canadian politics and society. There is anger and political-social domination in, “Baiting the Public,” before facing the harsh reality in “Normal People,” and learning to deal with the sad harsh reality through an abused woman living in a trash can with, “Raise Your Voice Joyce.” The front man (Mike Haliechuk) has the audience eating out the palms of his hand, swinging the mic around like it was his little toy as he runs around the stage and kneels on its floors, acting like a toddler with an interwoven sensibility of life, something the audience can relate to as they age into adulthood, wanting to go back to their younger years but they can’t because of the toxicity of living for so long.

As Fucked Up left the stage, the audience is brewing with anticipation for the final act in which Mike Haliechuk describes before leaving,

“Will wipe the floor with us (Fucked Up).” -Mike Haliechuk.

The anticipation lasts for a painstaking 45 minutes of waiting, mic checking, instrument checking, engineering problems, and more. Yet the audience waits… and waits… speculating if The Damned were there… some might give up waiting… 

Then, like a gust of wind, the curtain opens, and the Captain appeared.

Captain Sensible, the guitarist for The Damned, is back after missing last year’s tour because of covid restrictions, formerly and briefly replaced with Queens of the Stone Age’s guitarist, Troy Van Leeuwen. Captain Sensible only has one thing to say (verbatim), “how dare you mutiny against your Captain.”

Then one by one punk rock legends come on stage, drummer Will Taylor, keyboardist Monty Oxymoron, bassist Paul Grey, and the man himself, the lead singer, the founder of The Damned and the Goth Punk as a whole, Dave Vanian.

Once Dave steps up to the mic, the concert takes on a whole different meaning. This isn’t just a punk show… It is a Damned show, and everyone knows it. Unlike the roaring voice of Baby Shake or the hardcore antics of Fucked Up, The Damned has a different way of wilding up the audience. 

They nose dive into their first song, “Streets of Dreams,” and you can see the difference between the bands as clear as day. The Damned are entertainers with charisma, mischief, and a little light hearted humor here and there. They tease their audience throughout the first twelve songs not playing any classics but all of their B-sides and whatever was on their new album Darkadelic, even though the audience was begging to hear their hits. Then Dave reminds them, this was his show. He will sing what he wants.

The audience eats it up, singing to whatever lyrics they may or may not know, moshing as hard then before and now crowd surfing to the shock of unprepared security scrambling to catch the wave riders. 

Throughout the show Dave walks around stage gracing people with his signature black gloves as Captain Sensible solos like the blues was going out of style and Monty banging rift after rift out of his keyboard envisioning himself as a god. 

Not to mention the antics of the band itself, during “Beware of the Clown,” Dave turns around, revealing a red nose on his face as he sang about a killer clown before throwing that nose into the audience, only for it to return on Captain Sensible creeping after Dave while he sang. 

At points Dave would take a stage light and flash it at his bandmate or the audience. They had a running gag in the concert dedicating songs to people. Right before “Motorcycle Man,” Captain Sensible goes on the mic and states, 

“This song is about selling your shit on eBay, and I would like to dedicate it to Lemmy,” (Captain Sensible).

That being the same Lemmy of Motorhead fame. Dave gets in on this trend to when he dedicates “I Just Can’t Be Happy Today,” to Morrissey of The Smiths before iterating, 

“Everytime we played in LA Morrissey would always come to see us but never said, ‘Hi.’” (Dave Vanian)

Then Captain Sensible comes in calling Morrissey a,

“That miserable C…” (Captain Sensible).

The audience is stunned while simultaneously wilder and rowdier than ever as The Damned finally gives in and plays “Love Song.”

Once “Love Song,” plays, things would never be the same. Dave walks to the side of the stage where Baby Shake and Fucked Up are standing, goes to the lead singer of Baby Shake (Mary Blount) where she shouts the first spoken words of the song, “How do.” There the drums crash and pick up pace as the bass sped through the tempo as tension builds… 

Dave gives the release.

There and then a wall of sound bursts over the bowling alley as everyone wails through the lyrics. Monty couldn’t take it anymore and starts running around the stage, zipping past Sensible and Paul before wrapping around almost tripping over his keyboard.

From then on it was full speed ahead as they rip through “Machine Gun Etiquette,” “Fan Club,” “Neat Neat Neat,” and two encoures including their genius cover of Barry Ryan’s “Eloise,” “Smash it Up,” and the song that put punk on the charts, the very first punk single… 

“New Rose.”

At the end of the night, The Damned proved why they aren’t the greatest goth rock band, but the greatest punk band to exist. From their omnipotent stage performance to saying whatever comes to mind with zero regrets, not giving one inch of a care on what anyone else thinks, whether it be who they’re poking fun at or what they play. They played the music they wanted to hear.

After the pandemic and Captain not being allowed in the US last year, this show, this moment, was when The Damned took back their title as the rulers of punk rock.

For more punk rock related stuff, check out WHIP’S show, I’m Not Dead Yet , on Insta.

Radio show coming soon!