Shame review: A triumphant call to arms

Punk rockers: Shame delivered a raucous set the O2 Forum Kentish Town
AFP/Getty Images
Gemma Samways3 December 2018

Having delivered the year’s first great debut album in the second week of January, Shame could have been forgiven for taking the rest of 2018 off.

Instead, the south London five-piece have toured Songs Of Praise almost non-stop ever since, making Friday’s triumphant Forum show the culmination of 11 months hard graft.

Rattling through the record’s acerbic cuts before a baying crowd, Shame displayed no discernible signs of fatigue. Bassist Josh Finerty pinballed across the stage throughout, taking a dramatic tumble during the breakneck punk of Lampoon. Meanwhile, frontman Charlie Steen spent large portions of the set either bench-pressing the mic stand, immersed in the mosh pit or crowd-surfing.

Introducing fan favourite One Rizla as “the first song we ever wrote”, Steen paid tribute to The Queen’s Head, the Brixton pub that hosted the band’s earliest shows. Shame proved that they’ve managed to retain the visceral menace of those intimate gigs. Indeed, Tasteless’s “I like it better when you’re not around” refrain felt like a euphoric call to an arms rather than a surly rebuke.

Nestled among established material were new songs Human For A Minute and Exhale. Taking their cues from the melancholic atmospherics of Songs Of Praise-highlight Angie, rather than the record’s more brattish cuts, both tracks provided a tempting preview of Shame’s second album. It’s shaping up to be even more compelling than the first.

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