Slagerij Black Bull, Gateshead 15th November 2014

There doesn’t seem to be much of a ska-punk scene in the UK at the moment, we’re probably going back to the millennium when bands like Spunge, Capdown and Whitmore were successful, the scene always seemed to be much healthier in America, but surprisingly that hotbed of (well nothing I can think of) Swindon has produced a band that there’s a “buzz” in the With Guitars office, the unpronounceable Slagerij. I Googled it, I’m none the wiser.

Many of the ska-punks have multiple members with a brass section, keyboards and more than one vocalist, but not Slagerij, they have stripped it down to just a trio of the most rudimentary instrumentation: guitar, bass and drums. The consequence of that is that they sound more punk than ska, the choppy ska rhythms are very much there but it’s far more aggressive, probably as influenced by American bands like Lagwagon and Strung Out as much as the 2-Tone acts.

Warming up the crowd with ‘Set If Off’ and going straight into ‘All Night Long’, coincidentally the first two songs from their ‘Swim For Shore’ album, frontman Martin then had the crowd moving to front before cracking on frenetically through their earlier back catalogue before introducing a new slower song to the set ‘I Fucked Up’, we get one cover Beastie Boys ‘(You Gotta Fight) For Your Right (To Party)’, their drinking anthem ‘Let’s Get Pissed’, fists were raised chanting “Oi!, Oi!, Oi”, more songs from the last album and ending with the crowd favourite ‘Can’t Stop A Nation’.

It’s obvious that Slagerij live for playing live, here are a highly accomplished band really enjoying themselves and that enthusiasm is infectious. You don’t have to be a ska-punk fan to enjoy them.

Let’s hope that enthusiasm spreads, it’d be wonderful to see an emerging UK ska-punk scene and there could be no better band to forefront it than Slagerij. 7.8/10
Ray Nicholl

Live profile photo by El Thompson

https://www.facebook.com/slagerijuk?fref=ts