Gig Review: Manchester Punk Festival 2018 Day One 19/4/18

(Note: Colin's parts are in regular text and Emma's parts are in italic.)

The moment we've been waiting on for six long months finally arrived last week! My favourite weekend of the year was upon us, Manchester Punk Festival. Back for its fourth year, it promised to be the best one yet. The festival, which in my opinion is the best in the UK, is getting bigger and bigger and is attracting more and more of the biggest punk bands from around the world. It's also attracting more and more people from not just the UK but from all other the world. This year's festival had attendees from places as far as the USA, New Zealand and South Africa – the latter where our pals and roomies Robyn and Brett had travelled from. I definitely can't complain about the four hour journey we had to get to Manchester.

MPF 2018 also featured some venue changes due to the festival's former home base, Sound Control, being demolished earlier this year. Now the festival has added Rebellion to its roster of venues and is also now using The Bread Shed (formerly known as Zoo) for the whole day rather than just the after party. MPF also used Gorilla, Zombie Shack, Underdog, Font Bar and The Thirsty Scholar again this year.

Being the first band on at the first night of a festival is not the easiest of tasks to be given. But it was a task that Belfast-based pop punk foursome No Matter didn’t seem in the least bit phased by. It was great to see Rebellion so packed out for their set – that wouldn’t be the case at 7pm in Belfast the band said! I hadn’t seen No Matter before, and really had only listened to them briefly, but I was very impressed by their upbeat and infectious pop punk tunes. The vocal harmonies from three out of four of the band members were excellent. This is definitely a band I’ll be checking out some more.

Captain Trips are a band I've been wanting to catch live for a while. Whilst I'm not overly familiar with their music I've always dug what I have heard and I've been told many times what a great live band they are. Now, after seeing them live, I can confirm that they are in fact a great live band. Something I really loved about seeing them perform was how laid back and effortlessly cool they were whilst doing some serious shredding. I can't imagine that many technical melodic skate punk bands wear flip flops on stage but Captain Trips lead vocalist and guitarist does and carries it off with some aplomb. The crowd at Rebellion was quickly growing and loving the band, with a few starting a small mosh pit very early in the evening. Because I'm not massively familiar with Captain Trips music the biggest highlight for me was their cover of the John Farnham's classic You're The Voice. This got a great reaction. Captain Trips really impressed me and I will definitely be checking them out properly when we get home from Manchester… once we recover.

It feels like some time since Colin and I last saw Crazy Arm live so, as one of my longtime favourite UK punk bands, I was particularly keen to see them at night one of MPF 2018. They haven’t yet released their fourth album but perhaps we would be treated to some songs from it. Frontman Darren opened the band’s set with a gripping acapella number – he has such an awesome voice – but it wasn’t long before they’d launched into their fully rocking, fast and furious set. There were at least two new songs in there but also plenty of oldies to get the crowd singing along with fists in the air – Still To Keep, in particular, proving to be a great big singalong moment. Interestingly Darren said the band hadn’t prepared a set list, they just played! Awesome! The end of the set however featured an appearance from violinist Luke Yates, also of Sounds Of Swarmi fame, for Song Of Choice. Finishing their set with Tribes – ‘it’s a singalong innit’ – was certainly a wise move. We were now suitable pumped for our dash over to The Bread Shed!


Making our first and only venue swap of the evening, we got our power walking feet ready and made the supposedly 15 minute walk from Rebellion to The Bread Shed. By this point both venues were running a little late but I think we beat the Google maps estimated time anyway and arrived to a super packed out, hot and sweaty Bread Shed, formally known as Zoo to us returning MPFers, ready for the start of Roughneck Riot’s set. It was apparent that the band were suffering from some sort of technical difficulties, perhaps due to the inclusion of an accordion, mandolin and banjo (not your typical punk instruments) in their entourage, but it certainly didn’t affect the crowd’s enjoyment. As a TNS band, and Northerners too, Roughneck are always going to go down well at MPF. There was dancing a plenty, well as much as was possible in a tight space, and the pit opened up for the rowdier punks to let off some steam. Roughneck Riot have a new album on the way and the first half of their set showcased a number of new tracks. They all sounded great but it was the older tunes, such as This Is Our Day, Parasites and Animosity, that were most enthusiastically received. The party was well and truly go in The Bread Shed with just one band to go…

The band I was perhaps the most excited about seeing all weekend were headlining the first day of the festival – bloody Random Hand! The Yorkshire based four piece were back after an almost three year hiatus and were ready to put on a show that only Random Hand can. The Bread Shed was packed for these returning heroes and, as soon as those first blast of Robin's trombone hit, the crowd went wild and we were off. From then on it was as if Random Hand had never been away as they stormed through their set. When a band is away for such a long time, it's very easy to forget just what an incredible band they are. It also reminds you just how many incredible songs they have written. From the very first song until the last I was thinking, "oh I love this one." If they were rusty from being on hiatus for so long it really didn't show as they didn't seem to miss a note and jumped around the stage with seemingly unlimited energy and enthusiasm. When Random Hand went on their hiatus they left us with one final parting gift a brand new album named Hit Reset. At the time this album was a little bittersweet for me, I loved it but I knew it would be a long time before I got to see any of the songs live. Now I have seen some of the songs live and it was fantastic, they fit perfectly into their set and the crowd were into them as much as they were the old classics. The crowd were so enthusiastic and were going wild throughout with plenty of skanking, moshing, crowd surfing and stage diving throughout the set. Despite the rambunctiousness of the crowd, it never got so out of hand that the folk who didn't want to be in the pit felt uncomfortable. Obviously Random Hand absolutely killed it and any other band during the entirety of the entire festival will have a hard time topping that performance. It is so good to have them back.

If the five bands that we saw tonight were at a normal gig it would easily be the gig of the year. But this was just day one of Manchester Punk Festival and there were still two complete days and many, many wonderful punk rock bands to go. If this was just the beginning, this was going to be a weekend to remember!

This review was written by Colin Clark and Emma Prew. Photos by Emma Prew.