LIVE REVIEW | THE SEWER CATS | MANCHESTER RETRO BAR 04/10/24 by Craig Harston

Sometimes, there can be nothing better than a load of punks getting together in a basement on a Friday night to celebrate unity and solidarity. Event organisers Riot Garden put together a solid line up of bands but it was mostly to celebrate the release of Manchester’s The Sewer Cats’ second album, Obnoxious.

Unfortunately, I missed the first band, Lynskey, due to arriving late but managed to catch the excellent Sourflake, who impressed with their old school riot grrl aesthetic, and Grail Guard, who got the whole room moving through their set of hardcore punk songs, their frontman spending pretty much his entire time off the stage.

But it was ultimately The Sewer Cats night. Following a few words from Riot Garden, who lamented that the punk scene is still predominately white males and it’s their mission to change this and make it a safe space for everyone, Cass and Josh hit the stage. Somehow managing to get a wall of death going in their first song, The Sewer Cats played a great set, the only downside being they didn’t seem to play for long enough! Showcasing many of their new songs from Obnoxious, amongst them ‘Get It, Star & Garter‘, ‘Tell Me Something True‘, the title track and an excellent rendition of ‘Parasites‘, they were joined by Slab bass player Paul for ‘You Cannot Be Serious‘ and Cass got the whole crowd going with some “Woo’s” during ‘Boo Hoo!’

A common staple at Sewer Cats shows is the formation of human pyramids, but tonight it served another purpose as well as being fun – a piece of the ceiling had come loose and it was pretty great seeing a load of punks coming together to try and fix it (though terrifying to see the barman walk into the pit with some tape and scissors!!).

Finishing the show with one of their earliest songs, a super fast cover of Kelis’ ‘Milkshake‘, the calls for “one more song” were met with Cass admitting they hadn’t practised an encore song but the crowd were rewarded with a performance of the excellent ‘Delia‘.

Overall, it was a great show, with Josh absolutely shredding the guitar as usual (his shirt disappeared at some point through the show!) and Cass keeping her drums extremely tight alongside her vocals – she was also looking extremely pleased between songs at the response the duo were receiving!