The Forum is Royal Tunbridge Wells’ premier music venue, competing and clinching the title from The Pantiles’ coverted Jazz bandstand and numerous live and local pubs. It is a curious affair, having started its life as Europe’s largest public toilet, a fact that lingers on the lips of almost all of its slightly mocking visitors, and has recently celebrated its 20th birthday with an NME award for best small venue. Conceived and nurtured by an ardently enthusiastic group of resident rockers, The Forum has boasted the likes of Coldplay, Ellie Goulding and Metronomy as well as innumerable locally sourced thrash metal bands. It is with this curious history in mind that Drenge’s decision to play the 200 or so capacity venue makes most sense.
Consisting of guitarist and vocalist Eoin Loveless and drummer brother Rory, Drenge have pushed their way through a heavily festivaled summer with an almost vitriolic punk/rock fusion. Although yet to garner the mainstream success connected with high album sales or a hit single, the live intensity of this stripped bare duo forces heads to turn. While Tunbridge Wells may be most often thought of, when not forgotten altogether, as a quaint hub of Russel Group fodder, its love of clenched fisted and sweaty musical release is unrivalled within the home counties. Whether as the result of the town’s middle age friendly infrastructure or something in its chalybeate spring water, all who enter The Forum fail to cling onto their reservations within the course of the first wall of death. Drenge were offered exactly this kind of curiously friendly welcome.
Before the 22.00 billing commenced however, it turned to Slaves to warm up the sold out crowd. With a similar set up and sound to the eventual headliners, Laurie and Isaac raced through half an hour of slightly self mocking geezer punk- imagine LCD Sound System’s James Murphy mixed with half of the members of Be Your Own Pet. A highlight came in the form of ‘Girl Fight’, a part raconteured, part screamed tale of fake-nailed aggression on the town’s cobbled streets. Drummer and vocalist Isaac clearly took great pleasure in announcing he’d “fucked it right up” following the final blast of “GIRL FIGHT!”
Oiled and slightly battered by the decreasingly ironic moshpit, the atmosphere within the slanty L shaped room grew until Drenge emerged to unrestrained roars of appreciation. Uneventful beyond it’s proximity to Kelly Holme’s birthplace, when an on topic band like Drenge visits Tunbridge Wells all measures are taken to shake off pre-conceptions and welcome.
Within the first moments of bellowing guitar and pulse re-regulating drumming it is evident that Drenge exceed the minimalist set up in terms of vigour, enthusiasm and sheer noise. Sandwhiched between the egg boxed ceilings and sticky floors, Eoin’s style is reminiscent of Smashing Pumpkin’s Billy Corgan, minus 50% of the rock and roll dick-swinging, twirls of finger-plucking complexity rising above slurred power chords. Across the stage Rory offers a similar mix of proficiency and un-considered rage, thundering through singles ‘Blood & Milk’, ‘Dogmeat’ and ‘Bloodsports‘ with an increasingly wide snarl.
While the set may have been a short one, clocking in at just under an hour, it is testament to Drenge’s unrivalled enthusiasm that the crowd rose with them in absolute unison. From the quieter moments of social observation that flow naturally from the Sheffield natives to the outright musical fuck you of ‘Face Like A Skull‘, their desire to be in that exact moment shone brightly in a genre over-shadowed by the once greats. Whether a flash in the pan product of youth and dubious political benefactors or the start of a long, prosperous career, it simply did not matter as Eoin’s still jerkily playing body was carried in reverence across the crowd.