Bob Vylan: here’s Britain’s answer to Rage Against the Machine

Bob Vylan performing at Electric Brixton
Bob Vylan performing at Electric Brixton - Esme Bones

An explosive fusion of punk, grime rap and rave, Bob Vylan are 2020s Britain’s answer to Rage Against the Machine, with political songs tackling issues from the rental crisis to racial prejudice. On the back of two DIY albums which have hit the Top 30 without the help of big record companies, the duo fit right in on a UK scene where declamatory post-punks like Idles and Sleaford Mods prevail. This first of their two sold-out shows at the Electric was energetically received.

The pair, who are known only as Bobby Vylan (vocals) and Bobbie Vylan (drums) to protect their identities amid their paranoia about digital surveillance, delivered a hugely enjoyable show centred on live rapping and percussion, with pre-recorded grungy guitars, ferocious sub-bass and sundry other noise synced in.

They first materialised onstage to the strains of The Beatles’ Here Comes The Sun, of all things – a nod to this year’s album title Humble As The Sun – and Bobby duly announced that they’d begin proceedings with “some light stretching and meditation”. As a dubbed-out thrash-metal instrumental boomed from the PA, he indeed led off with some physio moves, the entire floor of the Electric mirroring him. Whatever my expectations of Bob Vylan were, an introductory yoga class certainly wasn’t amongst them.

Suitably warmed up, the firebrand MC thereafter spat rhymes from the latest LP with incandescent fury. “Welcome to England, where so many men live on a knife’s edge,” he railed on Reign, adding, “they want a n---- with no attitude”.

Bob Vylan at Electric Brixton
Bob Vylan at Electric Brixton - Esme Bones

Such confrontational messaging inevitably invites comparisons with the hip hop group Public Enemy, and latter-day UK drill. Yet between songs Bobby made no effort to uphold his lyrics’ anger – or to wax polemical about Trump, or Israel. At times, he exuded the cuddly bonhomie of a kids TV presenter.

But once the music started again, he embodied downtrodden defiance : during the incendiary Get Yourself A Gun, he high-stepped while firing off imaginary bullets with his fingers, and on agitational anthem Pretty Songs he snarled, “No liberal lefty c--- is gonna tell me punching Nazis ain’t the way”.

One minute, Bobby was erupting about toxic masculinity (He’s A Man) or xenophobia (We Live Here), the next he was emoting about the duo’s anti-corporate journey or eating healthy. Yet Bob Vylan weren’t consumed by the hectoring mentality which scuppers so much protest music. As the packed house filed out to the strains of Katrina & The Waves’ Walking On Sunshine , Britain’s most hardcore grime-punk duo had somehow established a mood of feel-good catharsis.

Bob Vylan play again tonight at Brixton Electric