Sweat, sound, and stage chaos. Guitar Wolf, The D4 and Nothing at All ignite Double Whammy. Walking into the venue feels like stepping into the eye of a Punk Rock hurricane.
The air is thick with sweat, the walls practically dripping like a sauna. Packed to the gills with a seething mass of bodies, the only thing separating this from a full-blown naked sauna session is, thankfully, the fact that everyone’s clothed.
Nothing At All, the New Zealand Punk upstarts are hammering through their set with unfiltered energy, and they’ve got a special guest, John the promoter, joining them on stage.
It’s raw, loud, and beautifully chaotic. Their final song, Busted, was written by their drummer and comes with an intriguing backstory. As a young man, he scribbled down a list of the drugs he had taken and the women he had been with. Only to accidentally leave it lying around for his mother to find.
Hence, Busted. Performed live, the song builds to a crashing finale, leaving the crowd electrified.
The venue is running a two-stage setup tonight. One at the back and the main stage.
Then, like a Molotov cocktail of sound and fury, The D4 explode onto the main stage.
It’s as if they’ve time-warped straight from 1998, their Punk spirit still intact, their energy dangerously volatile. The crowd goes feral. Even their youngest fan, a kid no older than seven, rides the shoulders of his dad, moshing like he was born for this.
During Party, Jimmy Christmas spits a full mouthful of beer up into the air and over the first three rows, who respond with sheer joy.
Running on Empty sees the band practically levitate off the stage, and at one point, Dion Palmer slides a full upside-down beer can along his fretboard, spilling liquid mayhem as he shreds.
They finish in a deafening cacophony, with the final song hitting a skull-rattling 111dB.
And then comes Guitar Wolf.
As their set is about to begin, Rockaway Beach by the Ramones blares over the PA.
Guitar Wolf are massive Ramones fans, so it’s a fitting precursor. But something weird happens. The music is still blasting while the band is already on stage. The singer’s talking, but nobody can hear him. Is this some avant-garde Japanese Punk intro…
Seiji and Gotz crack open a can, presumably of sake, and down it in one go before launching into their set. The drummer remains statue-still, as the chaos erupts around him.
The PA blasts at a volume rivalling The D4’s performance, yet surprisingly few in the crowd wear ear defenders. No wonder one in five people is functionally deaf these days.
Four songs in, and the crowd is still warming up. Head-nodding? Sure. Full-on mosh pit? Not yet.
Maybe it’s the aging audience, a little slower to spark. Guitar Wolf’s songs blur into one another, the Japanese lyrics turning the vocals into more of an instrument than a distinct narrative. The three-minute bursts of punk brilliance keep us locked in.
Madness ensues. Seiji dives into the crowd, surfing across the hands of the audience before flipping upside down, attempting to walk on the ceiling. A female fan soon joins him, hoisted up by the crowd in a bid to replicate the feat.
She doesn’t quite make it, but damn, it’s punk as hell.
By the time the set winds down, the crowd has thinned a bit. Many likely spent after the sheer force of The D4. But those who remain are witnessing a glorious, distorted, sweat-soaked spectacle.
Double Whammy, you’ve done it again. My clothes are soaked, and my soul feels just a little bit louder.
Paul Marshall
Photography by Leonie Moreland
Guitar Wolf
The D4
