In an intimate UK show, preceding their appearances at this weekend’s Reading and Leeds Festivals, and, ahead of their upcoming European tour with 30 Seconds To Mars and Mike Shinoda, Don Broco completely dominated the stage at Cambridge’s The Junction on Wednesday night and was a muscular display of what future performances on the tour will shape up to look like.
Having seen them perform earlier in the year touring on this, their new album Technology, I knew the vibrancy to expect and it had all the marching, abundant and the actual requisite energetic overload I have come to anticipate from them. With plenty of chanting and just overwhelming loudness which then became a roar when the lights were dropped, this band is wholly capable and definitely becoming fully widescreen in popularity and demand. Opening with ‘Stay Ignorant’ their set just was growingly infectious song after song as plenty of moshiness and crowd surfing ensued, the audience clearly being overtaken by frontman Rob Damiani’s battle cry, ‘Let’s start off as we mean to go on and open this s**t up right here!’
Damiani further relayed that The Junction was quite dear to them as a band as it was the first location that they played outside of hometown Bedford, when they competed in a Battle of The Bands competition back in the day. And, oh, how they have grown into the place they now inhabit. The new album creates a whole world where they conjure such adrenaline through driving song after song. There is nothing to fault. They deliver on the album as well as onstage. It is complete submersion and it’s a visceral, wonderous attack on the senses in the best possible way. Without a doubt, this is a band you want to follow because of the fresh, rigorous rock they produce along with a lead singer who fronts up to the audience with such ownership, its no wonder whatever they do, raises a huge, solid cheer from the audience with every single song.
The new material from this latest album has more a gritty, raw and rigorous structure to it but with plenty of clear hooks that makes it easy to find a place in their music. And, with hints of electronic sound and funk undertones at times, the mixture is eclectic and complex while true to their ethos. Further on in the set list I heard the one I was waiting to hear, my album favourite, ‘Come Out To LA’. For me it’s the stand out, but, to each their own. There are plenty of blasting, gritty sounds to attach to throughout and heard live, you catch all the searing guitar riffs more fully as the music just bounces across every surface in the venue.
Don Broco has a protracted, lengthy trajectory ahead and with Damiani leading and conducting the masses as well as guiding the band’s overall presence on stage so ably, you can see why there is a long life on the road they are travelling.
Words by: Dana Miller
Photos by ©PremiumPhotographic
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