Last weekend saw one of the city's finest underground bands deliver a blistering set, in a Crawdaddy rightly reduced to a sweat box, as a crowd surfing/moshing horde of hardcore kids and left of the centre indie kids turned out in their hordes to bid farewell to Puget Sound. Puget Sound have been around since 1996, coming for the most part from the DIY/hardcore scene that they were destined never to leave. Starting off with tracks like "Rebellion" in an angsty ska punk that had fed itself on the corpse of Kurt Cobain and broke with much of the street punk aesthetic that was the best known expression of the Dublin punk scene in the mid ninties through bands like Striknien DC. The sheer technical control wielded by this trio over their assorted instruments by the end of their stint really was something to behold, completely seperating them from hordes of generic hardcore bands springing up as a result of the DS13 wave of inspiration from Scandanavia or the more retrograde standard crust/d-beat bands that breed like flies in every punk scene. The term jazz punk has beed bandied about as an apt description for the meandering journeys around the fret board that characterised the bass, sped along by the insane time keeping of the drummer with his famous cow-bell. This is that same drummer who busks using Ballygowan water cooler bottles on Grafton St.

With support coming from Estel and stoner rock merchants Mongolia, for €7 this was a gig that would leave regrets if I had flaked off and missed it. Over the years Puget Sound have put themselves to the use of many fundraisers for left libertarian concerns, last summer they played to about 400 people at a solidarity gathering in Rossport. The first hardcore show I waddled along to was in The Temple on Dorset St, given a free copy of Puget's debut on the door in as a bonus for the albums launch it was breathtaking to finally come across a music scene which didn't involve posturing around the side of the dancefloor, with a majority of gig goers getting caught up in the splattery of the moshing and skanking . Whatever about their DIY ethics, that the Dublin music scene and press failed to pick up on the weight of excitment generated at Puget Sound gigs in their heyday is astounding. Tracks like Silicone Antichrist placed the band in the position of puppeteers to dance floors packed with sweat kids skanking it up, before the sudden explosion of chords would transform them into a mosh . Not to worry, I'm sure the next generation of singer songer writers or posing indie bands made up of walking hair cuts is only just around the corner. Damn this was a fucking good band - they will be missed.

Photos from Thumped here.

Labels: Gig Review, Music, Punk