SoCal MELODIC PUNKS DELIVER ON DRIZZLY UK NIGHT

Live Review / Authority Zero / Gullivers, Manchester 10/06/24

In spite of the majority of the country tuning in to England’s semi-final clash with Netherlands, quite a few punks hit the upstairs room of Gullivers pub in Manchesters Northern Quarter to catch a night of energetic punk rock!

First up were Liverpool’s Mark Murphy And The Meds, playing a great set of their thrashy pop punk. Songs such as ‘Indiana Jones And You’ and ‘Cider’ helped them get the early-arrival’s warmed up with plenty of banter, even pointing out they’d forgotten their own merch!

Brooklyn, NY’s MakeWar hit the stage next. Playing an absolutely blistering set of mostly older songs, including ‘Matador Pool Party’, ‘My Bones’ and ‘DTFH’, they even got a good back and forth with the crowd on ‘Oh, Brother’. Taking a little time to promote their latest album, this year’s ‘A Paradoxical Theory Of Change’, MakeWar pointed out that it’s more of a grower than previous albums (“It’ll take at least two listens!”) before proceeding to play a couple of songs from it, including, ‘Goodbye To All That’ and the excellent ‘Discord’. Due to the sound guy losing track of time, MakeWar were even able to cram in an extra song before closing their set.

California’s Authority Zero are celebrating 30 years since their inception in 2024 and in spite of releasing music for over 20 years now, they’ve inexplicably never received the same level of popularity as some of their peers. Tonight’s passionate performance of songs from across their entire career really showcased their excellent mash-up of melodic punk rock and ska punk.Hitting the stage with the title track from 2021’s ‘Ollie Ollie Oxen Free’, frontman Jason Devore quickly got the crowd going, following up with ‘Get It Right’ and ‘When We Ruled The World’. ’12:34’ saw the first circle pit of the night while ‘No Regrets’ involved the whole room singing along on the “No-oh-oh-oh-woah’s”. They then got the whole room dancing with the laidback ska song ‘Big Bad World’ before ramping things back up with the super-fast ‘Everyday’. This was followed up with the absolute anthem that is ‘Revolution’, featuring a great back and forth with the crowd on “You wanna revolution?” “Yeahhh”!

Following a pronouncement from someone in the crowd that England had won their match, Authority Zero got things back on track with a few more songs including ‘The Back Nine’, ‘One More Minute’ and their cover of Wall Of Voodoo’s ‘Mexican Radio’, which got the whole room dancing again! Heading into the final songs of the night, Devore joined the crowd for ‘Find Your Way’, even getting on the shoulders of one enthusiastic fan, before finishing with ‘Lift One Up’ and an encore of ‘A Passage In Time’.

Overall, it was a great show from Authority Zero with plenty of crowd interaction from Devore, some very intense guitar from Brandon Landelius, tight drums courtesy of Chris Dalley and Mike Spero playing some excellent bass!