When The Orwells arrived in the UK earlier in the year to play The Great Escape festival (fresh from a successful showing at SXSW in Texas), their brand of raw, rough and rockin’ punk was enough to ensure not just here was a band with confidence and ease beyond their years (then all just 17 years old), but one to be excited about. Now, on their return to these shores, the five-piece from the Chicago ‘burbs, seem – on this, their second London consecutive date – to prove just that. One look at frontman Mario Cuomo – with manic rolling eyeballs, tousled blond locks and wearing a slightly fey, black chiffon top over a leopard print vest on this occasion – and you just know that this is going to be an event. As it transpired to be.
The empty floor space prior to their emergence on stage is filled with the buzz of expectancy, and it’s not long before this turns to whoops and cheers as the five take up their positions, with Cuomo asking – insisting – on an answer: “You alright? ARE YOU ALRIGHT?!” And from here on in it’s non-stop. Mallrats, with its repeated ‘lalalala’ refrain is picked up and carried by the crowd, as it storms through a barrage of Henry Brinner’s drums, and twin brother bassist Grant’s guitar distortion. The crowd don’t need further urging to let loose, jumping and dancing like there’s no tomorrow as power riffs abound fast and furiously. Other Voices, from their debut EP of the summer, leads a terrifying assault, kicking like a head butt with Cuomo belting out a vocal that is in danger of damaging eardrums; whilst the morbid Blood Bubbles is slower in pace, but no less lacking in intensity, and if one has a moment to be impressed beyond the frontman’s stage presence, it is in the suicide contemplation depicted in the song.
Having just released their second EP in three months, title track Who Needs You provides a sonic boom of an evening highpoint, with its heavy-laden hooks and all-consuming, all-absorbing guitar force of Brinner, and the dual guitarists Matt O’Keefe and Dominic Corso. Cuomo’s vocal is not so much tuned and perfectly picked, but a husky roar that is delivered like a full-on tank truck going at 90mph.
By the time they draw to a close, running through The Stooges’ I Wanna Be Your Dog, it’s a veritable free-for-all as the front row moshers erupt in earnest – at one point, when invited onto the stage, fans outnumber the total of band members – crowd-surfing ensues, and their own bouncer earns his dollar for the night. It’s raucous. It’s wild. It’s all just the beginning for The Orwells, too, you feel. Five minutes after leaving the stage, Cuomo cuts a solitary figure standing in the alleyway outside the venue. If one could have read his thoughts they may well have been along the lines of ‘Hell – we nailed that tonight! Alright!’
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Photo: Lindsay Banks
