Inflatable flamingos and beach balls? Glowing green beards? Jaw-dropping Mohicans? Sounds like a Ferocious Dog gig.
Coming home for the final stop of their Fake News and Propaganda tour, the night was a perfect love letter to their die-hard fans with an atmosphere dripping with comradeship and drunken merriment. Fans of the Celtic-punks (known as ‘Hell Hounds’) mounted their friends' shoulders to chant along to the band’s well-worn bangers.
This was a performance showing Ferocious Dog in their prime and considering this was the fourth time they have sold out Rock City, and are the only unsigned band to ever do so, we should expect no less.
The swarm of the increasingly shirtless crowd were treated to the usual array of folk-meets-punk instruments with John Leonard (who ended up being carried across the crowd of spiked hair) swapping from banjo to mandolin to whistle to accordion, while John Alexander and former Carter USM guitarist Les Carter provided the hearty thumps and growls of bass and electric guitar.
Meanwhile the younger Alex Smith effortlessly laid down the driving rhythms on his drum kit, giving the odd spin of his sticks just behind the intoxicating fiddle playing of Dan Booth, who hopped about the stage as lead singer Bonsall commanded with godly bellows and a charismatic grin.
Across their two-hour show the crowd was either pushing, romping or cheering to heart-racers like Gallows Justice and Slow Motion Suicide, where Ken draws on his own mining experience and the destruction of the industry, or they seemed to be in a state of sobriety as they sang in unison to the beautiful melodies of Unconditional and A & B.
By the end, the band had mixed in new tracks from their new record Fake News and Propaganda, which gives fans more of that signature Ferocious Dog political commentary. Bedlam Boys runs a furious pace - the chorus is too fast for mouths to keep up with!
The North Notts band once again gave their home crowd an unforgettable performance and by the end almost the whole floor was a mosh pit.
There were hundreds of plastic glasses emptied tonight - and it’s clear the Hell Hounds are thirsty for more.
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