Bob Vylan vs Discharge – is anyone killing punk rock?

During my summer break in the UK I found myself in the enviable position of being able to attend a live music event once again. With the loosening of restrictions after ‘Freedom Day’, makeshift social distanced / limited capacity shows (whereby the crowd had to sit at prebooked tables) were being replaced by the traditional standing / full capacity gigs. The first to be announced was the Boom reopening show, featuring a two stage all day punk & hardcore line up, headlined by the legendary Discharge. A short while after, whilst browsing the local listings, I saw that Bob Vylan was also announced to be playing at the Brudenell Social Club.

Now under normal circumstances I’d be at both gigs without question. Despite this, there was still the lingering threat of Covid to contend with.  As I work abroad, I had to be careful, because if I contracted Covid, I wouldn’t be able to fly back to Malaysia and resume my employment. The risk was too great, so I had to regretfully pass on the Discharge gig. However, Bob Vylan was playing the night before I was due to fly, and as I had to do a PCR Test 3 days before my flight, I would already have a negative test required for flying, so if I caught Covid at the show then it wouldn’t have been detected until I’d safely arrived in Kuala Lumpur. Still, I wanted to avoid that nightmare scenario, so I masked up and maintained social distancing where possible whilst I was at the show. [FYI I tested negative upon my return to Kuala Lumpur].

I was a little disappointed at not being able to go to the Discharge gig, but needs must, and it sold out anyway, much to the delight of the venue and the bands. It’s not like I haven’t seen Discharge before, and it’s not like I won’t get to see them again. The first time at the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford in 2010, and then twice at Temple of Boom in 2018 and 2019. The thing about Discharge is that they are amazing, and probably in my top ten bands of all time. They emerged in the early 1980s during the second wave of punk; turning up the tempo, adding brutality, and took the politics of punk to a more confrontational level. There have been hundreds of influenced and clone bands ever since, and they certainly are the pioneers of the style that influenced the emergence of the D-Beat generation. If I am angry, pissed off, or in the mood for mangle, then their albums ‘Why?’ and ‘Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing’ are still go-to records. Despite it being 30 years since those records have been released, every time I have seen them live, those songs, and the rest of their catalogue still sound brutal, fresh, and relevant.

I first became aware of Bob Vylan when he appeared on my Facebook feed. Someone had shared a link to an article or song, and in the image was a young Black British guy wearing a leopard skin fake fur coat, with a Crass t-shirt underneath. That was enough to captivate my attention, and the write up / bio was enough to add them to my radar, and later buy a ticket to the show. Having spent nearly 30 years of going to live gigs (956 at the last count on my spreadsheet) most bands I have seen have been white males with a standard guitar, bass, drums set up. I have always been keen to check out acts beyond the norm, yet in recent years I have started to diversify further and take active steps to embrace multiculturalism to a deeper level in my cultural interests (for example, I only watch foreign dramas with subtitles when I watch TV programmes these days). Bob Vylan seemed like a perfect opportunity to act on this philosophy within the sphere of music.

In the run up to the show I was helping my mum declutter her house, having a good sort out in the kitchen, and throwing away four bin bags of old food products and medicines. During this time, I decided to listen to all the Bob Vylan output available on Spotify. To be honest, at first, I wasn’t fully on board. The music sounded more like the grime/rap side of the crossover; however the lyrics did blow me away, and I could draw some distinct parallels between the messages he was conveying, and those that have emerged from the wider punk movement. Fast forward a couple of weeks, after hearing and seeing the crowd reaction to the first couple of songs, any lingering cobwebs of doubt had been blown away with a hurricane force wind generated by the sound of an enormous door slamming in the gates of hell. The electronic element to the sound (the guitars and the grime beats) sounded heavy and loud, and the live drumming element added an extra depth to the heaviness. It was an overall assault of brutality, just the same as you would experience at any punk rock show with a decent sound system. Then there is the singer, a charming, enigmatic, and down to earth character – who brought the energy to the crowd with his constant movement and interaction. Just as the sound regularly flipped between ambient and heavy, the singer would flip in-between songs from being the nice human interacting with the crowd, to then contextualising a song in his introductions, spitting venomous hate and no holds barred messages about everything wrong with modern Britain. It was Ying and Yang poetry in motion. What I enjoyed in general was this crossover of music, where during the heavy raucous parts if felt like half punk (Discharge style) and half fast ‘dance music’ (Grime, Jungle) – it was quite unlike many things I had heard before. What made the show go to the next level though, was a wild and lively crowd, and the mosh pit going mental for every song. I wasn’t even drinking that night, and still I found myself  dancing along on the cusps of the action. What a show, and what a way to spend my last night in the country. Despite my early flight the next day, I could hardly sleep from all the adrenalin pumping around my body.  

And now to the headline of the article – Bob Vylan vs Discharge – is anyone killing punk rock? Well, that is just the clickbait, as my avid readers will already know, punk rock is about the spirit of co-operation, not competition. Both artists aren’t killing punk rock, both artists are ‘killing it’ in punk rock (‘killing it’ is a slang expression for doing something extremely well). Both artists are class warriors pointing out the ills in our country, both artists are attracting large crowds to their shows, both artists send everyone into a frenzy in the pit, both artists are presenting the same message with a different sound, and both artists are welcome to stand side by side in solidarity as seminal and meaningful members of our community. Perhaps a more meaningful way to frame this would be ‘is anyone destroying punk rock?’ Just as Discharge destroyed the ‘punk rock’ of the manufactured / poster boy / image consciousness bands during the first wave of punk, Bob Vylan are destroying the ‘punk rock’ of the sanitised, scripted, and soundalikes you can see ten-a-penny of at any of the main stages of Slam Dunk Festival. The only way punk continues to evolve is through the that old-aged sentiment of ‘DESTROY’ – so Discharge, and Bob Vylan – keep on killing it, and more importantly destroying it.  

Bob & Bob (Bob Vylan) with the drummer from Discharge
(Photo Credit: April Star Davis)