The Damned at the Palladium featured a conveyor belt of ghoulish acts alongside some magnificent punk rock. The show was dubbed “The Night of a Thousand Vampires”, and was simultaneously an attempt to break the record for the largest gathering of people dressed as vampires. The crowd duly obliged: the theatre was a vision of capes, fangs and fake blood.
Before the band came The Circus of Horrors, a non-PC troupe of scantily clad women, sword-swallowers and fire-eaters. Mercifully, The Damned have always been a more sophisticated proposition: Seventies punk pioneers who could actually play and went on to explore goth-rock and psychedelia.
At the heart of their sound is the sonorous baritone of frontman and former gravedigger Dave Vanian (real name David Lett). Dressed in full Dracula garb, the 63-year-old bellowed his way through old favourites Wait For The Blackout and I Just Can’t Be Happy Today. Suitably, Eloise and Grimly Fiendish had choruses to wake the dead, while Absinthe was a showcase for Raymond “Captain Sensible” Burns’s dextrous guitar work.
Punk rock is still most compelling in the hands of the young. But last night was proof that, at their best, these sixtysomething stalwarts remain supernaturally entertaining.
