The Bouncing Souls at Hevy 2011
What sort of band would be able to take a headline slot that clashed with a performance from The Dillinger Escape Plan on the main stage? Who would you be able to send out in that sort of battle? Most bands would get blown away in the furious chaos that spilt from Dillinger's every cell, so it would have to be someone pretty special. How about a legendary godfather of modern punk itself? Yeah, that'll do. Cue The Bouncing Souls.
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Over twenty years into their career, The Bouncing Souls can still do DIY punk rock as well as any of the bands of today that they have so clearly influenced. So often you can get a name of an era past come out on stage and you really wish they had called it a day. We've seen the musical equivalent of mutton dressed as lamb (and if we're looking at Debbie Harry, the visual equivalent too- what was she thinking?) more times than we want to, so it really is an absolute pleasure to be shown how it's done by a band of this calibre. Their capacity for cool performance puts all other 'mature' men to shame. I wanted to call my Dad and scold him for having taken up golf instead of punk rock as he aged.
The broad influence The Bouncing Souls have had on today's music is the most likely explanation for their material to still hold such relevance and sound so good; your Rancid and your Against Me! types will have picked up one of their records for inspiration in how to balance poppy rhythms with a swift uppercut of punk rock. It's an energy that comes to life on stage and was an absolute joy for everyone inside that tent that night. It didn't matter that there was quite a lot of room to move as a result of Dillinger's pull- it meant there was much more room to dance. Of course, 'True Believers' was the absolute highlight of this set, and an absolute pleasure to hear in its live, trashy glory.
To view all photos taken during this set click here. There are 3 available.