Friday 21st March 2008 @ Thekla, Bristol
With Support From: Cut Off Your Hands

It’s amazing what word-of-mouth can do. Only four weeks ago Does It Offend You, Yeah? opened proceedings proper at the Academy for the NME Awards Tour and absolutely stole the friggin’ show; brutally showing up Wank Stain & The Jang Jong Jing and The Cribs for their lack of originality and material. That faithful Tuesday night Bristol rocked its socks off and the city woke up to the brilliant insanity of these four lads from Reading. Word got around fast and tonight Thekla is packed to the rafters in anticipation of another electro-rock apocalypse party.

After a suitably warming warm up from four young Home and Away look-alikes with a gruesome name, Cut Off Your Hands, we’re onto tonight’s main attraction. Four luminous, garish hoodies take to the stage and rip straight into the brutal rhythms of Weird Science.

For those of you who haven’t heard DIOY,Y?, point one: Get over the name. Point two: Image Daft Punk and Death From Above 1979 meeting in a sordid, dark back alley and competing in a dance-off to the death. It’s hard to imaging but DIOY,Y? have forged two completely unique genres together into one electro/rock behemoth that’s slowly devouring underground UK.

It’s not long before the crowd really get going and it’s pogo mayhem down in the Old Profanity. It’s quite a rarity to see crowd surfers in Thekla these days but tonight all rules are tossed overboard and band and audience alike spend half the night suspended on hands. On several occasions during the gig the baiting, surging crowd pulse forward and absorb members of the band or even the techie; the sea of people swallowing them whole then spitting them out back onstage in a sweaty rebirth. Another Thekla rarity sees Big Jeff loose his front row centre spot as even he, yes even HE, is marginalised by this insane crowd to watch from the sidelines.

The highlight of the night though has to be the bass violating my ears. Far beyond being cranked up to 11, it’s more than the volume that impresses and the noise produced is so violently deep and penetrating it sounds as if we are in the satanic belly of Godzilla as he bellows and roars, vibrating our eardrums till our brains bleed. This combined with the tasty, funk lines that are a staple of every DIOY,Y? tune, proves for a truly thrilling night.

Our evening comes to a climax during the encore, when after We Are Rockstars, the entire band stage dive head first in to the throng in a suitably insane finale.

www.doesitoffendyou.com

Matt Whittle