The Murder Capital, Resident Brighton, 22nd August 2019

Promoting their debut album When I Have Fears, The Murder Capital are playing a run of record shop instores, last night visiting Brighton’s Resident. There has been much talk of their part in the new Dublin punk scene and comparisons therein but it’s wrong to lump them into a category; this record is a stand-alone piece of work and brings the rawest of tunes to the table. The album title is taken from a Keats’ poem that begins ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain’ – the fears and vulnerability we all have of not achieving what might have been. The tracks are dark and compelling, the drumming phenomenal. A modernised hybrid of Joy Division, Killing Joke and a smattering of Theatre of Hate, this is not by any means background music.

The band’s performance is similarly intense, from the turbulent Green and Blue to the pin-drop poignancy of the beautiful On Twisted Ground, they protract a reaction that I’ve seldom seen at this kind of event. The great thing about instores is that you get to see a band up close in a small, intimate setting; they can feel very personal but it’s not like being at a gig. Usually. This time though it is, and being able to create that kind of emotion-filled atmosphere in a shop on a sunny Thursday evening is really something quite special.

Keats’ sonnet ends with the lines ‘Then on the shore of the wide world I stand alone and think till love and fame to nothingness do sink’. Far from sinking from fame, The Murder Capital are stepping ever closer towards its epicentre; it will be interesting to see what comes next, that’s for sure.

You can buy When I Have Fears and check out more from The Murder Capital here and find all the wonders that Resident has to offer here.

Words and photos by Siobhan

23rd August 2019