The Brisbane four-piece touched down at the Forum this past weekend for the middle dates of a three-stop reunion run – Sydney's Enmore on one side, Brisbane's Fortitude Music Hall to close – with Secret World warming the room.
Their framing of the comeback was about as low-key as it gets: some blokes take up golf, this lot make noise together, and they’d simply missed doing it. The turnout suggested the time away had only sharpened the appetite.
Killing in the Name rolled out over the PA as a walk-on tape – the sound of a packed venue being lit like a fuse – and the place went off before a single chord landed. From opener How to Taste the floor was a churning, gleeful mess, and Vacation Forever and Lying on the Floor kept it there.
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Here’s the funny part: the four-piece of Luke Boerdam (vocals, guitar), James Tidswell (guitar), Luke Henery (bass) and drums barely had to spend a thing. Composed, unfussy, locked-in – they played it dead straight and let the punters supply the pandemonium. On a lesser night that might scan as coasting; this was a band who knew the material would do the graft and trusted the mob to bring the rest. The mix helped too, loud and clean, every riff landing where it should.
Blanket and Viceroy reset the room, with In the Aisle and Canada handing the diehards their reward. Viceroy in particular was the hinge the set swung on, kicking things up a rung and teeing off a merciless back nine through Saramona Said, So Sentimental, Like Soda, Jesus Stole My Girlfriend and, inevitably, Covered in Chrome. OK Cathedral’s stretched-out outro was a rare beat to catch breath before Kamikaze put boots back on throats; by the run home the Forum was one enormous, hoarse singalong.
The encore of Dope Calypso and Tinderbox was gravy. And it’s worth clocking the wider pattern: acts downing tools, murmuring “until next time”, then resurfacing for the emotional lap of honour has quietly become its own genre. Soho wear it lightly, treating the reunion less as a Grand Statement than a mates’ reconvening – the same lot back in the same sweaty room.
On record these songs are big, hook-first grunge-pop, engineered for radios and festival paddocks. Turned loose in a jammed Forum they become something blunter and better: less a set to watch than a thing to pile into. The band held the calm centre; the punters out front did the roaring.
Both looked delighted with the split.
