Orange Goblin
London, The Dome
Ben Ward and co. return – in front of a real, live audience – with yet another new “Make some fucking noise” normal.
We’re going to a gig – a real one. With a real, beer-drinking, fist-pumping audience. After multiple postponements, 15-plus months and a ton of Zoom calls, Orange Goblin’s 25th-anniversary fiesta – and bassist Martyn Millard’s swansong with the band – is finally going ahead. It’s exciting. It’s surreal.
“I think I felt pretty much every emotion possible,” singer Ben Ward chuckles over the phone post-gig. “We’ve done this for twentysix years now, and I don’t think I’ve felt quite as nervous as I did for these shows.”
The whole business of returning to live music after such a long, unprecedented break raises many questions. What will it be like? How does one write a live review? Is it possible to spend hours in something that doesn’t have an elasticated waistband – oh god, can I still fit into my jeans?! And will Ward be able to go a full show without urging the crowd to, like, “get in the fucking pit”’ or “go fucking crazy” – both of which, under social-distancing guidelines, are clearly not supposed to happen?
“It’s a bit… weird isn’t it?” the woman in front of us in the queue says, echoing our thoughts as the masked punters are ferried into the venue in batches. “You don’t know what to expect. Normally you get in, go to the bar, now you’re… what, finding a table?!”
Inside The Dome it’s all efficiency and hand sanitiser. Everyone is escorted to school examstyle tables of two, four and six. Masked staff bring drinks orders and card machines. It’s like being on a post-apocalyptic Grange Hill set, but with booze instead of test papers.
“My last gig was here, last March!” another punter tells us. “I just really want to see some live music.” Across from her a guy in a denim waistcoat laden with patches looks out at the stage. “Just be fucking loud!” he pleads, raising his arms as he and his friends take their seats and crack open cans of Brooklyn beer (included in the ticket price).
And then it’s showtime. The Suspiria soundtrack pairs enticingly with the baited breath of live-music junkies after months of enforced abstinence. The band walk out to the sort of heroes’ welcome that the footballers on the pub telly over the road would kill for: Gandalf-bearded drummer Chris Turner; pintsized guitarist Joe Hoare; outgoing bassist Martyn Millard; and Ben Ward, the capital’s very own heavy metal Everest, all twenty feet of him, beaming from ear to ear. Suddenly the world feels like a better place.
“A year and a half… it’s fucking great to be back!” he roars as they dive into the ZZ Top-via-Motörhead boogie of Solarisphere,
– the first in a ride through their Rise Above
Records-era songs (tomorrow they’ll play the latter-day stuff). “We can’t go fucking crazy, but we can make some fucking noise!”
From there psychedelic spirals (e.g. the deliciously bonged-out opening of Saruman’s Wish) mix with drop-D grooves and dancing dinosaur stomps. People mosh in their seats. The feeling of drums and bass, the sound of Hoare’s fully amped Gibson SG, the sensation of live music after so long… it’s quite emotional.
Tonight and tomorrow’s shows are also being live-streamed – allowing them to reach more people, and also be financially viable – so they clearly don’t want to mess up. Accordingly the sound in The Dome is the perfect cocktail of volume, classic rock richness and balls-to-the-wall oomph we’ve all been craving.
“A lot of care and attention went into the audio side of things,” Ward explains later. “Obviously we wanted to make sure that all the people around the world could get the closest to what we could here. Our sound engineer, Gez Walton, has worked tirelessly for months making sure we had the best set-up possible.”
It’s an all-killer set. Aquatic Fanatic, TimeTravelling Blues, Orange Goblin itself (“We haven’t played this one for many years, so bear with us!”)… It’s a reminder of what we knew already, but possibly take for granted in the face of their gung-ho humour and community spirit: Orange Goblin are really fucking good.
“Friday was the first time where we all got back to the dressing room, and we normally sit there and dissect it and say: ‘Oh, I messed up this bit,’ but all of us were really satisfied with everything we’d done,” he says later. “I think we got it a hundred per cent – for the first time in twenty-six years!”
After closing with a mighty Scorpionica – and a few punters leap out of their seats to cheer (they’re swiftly told to sit back down) – the band return for a Q&A with Prog editor Jerry Ewing, where the chitchat is jovial, and tributes to departing bassist Martyn (to be replaced by Blind River frontman Harry Armstrong) are heartfelt. For the rest of them, though, it’s far from over.
“I think these shows have given people a glimmer of hope,” Ward says. “We want to bring live music to people, and we’ll continue to do so because it’s clear that people do want it, people still enjoy it.”
Indeed, even the novelty of designated seats was a bonus for many present tonight. But ultimately the hope is for a swift return to full-capacity shows. For all the convenience of table service (and of livestreaming generally), there is a certain energy that only a mad-forit mass of bodies, shoulder to shoulder and united by a love of loud music, can create.
As a stopgap, however, tonight’s arrangement definitely works. And as our first gig back after such a strange, tumultuous year, we couldn’t have asked for more.