You can still catch Turnstile's epic performance on your TV or device for the next month. Depending on where you are in the world, these are your options...
UK coverage: free on BBC iPlayer
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Today, Turnstile are at Glastonbury for the second time in their career, having previously played in 2022. This time they're on a bigger stage, the Other Stage, at a better time. Indeed their current status is such that they've headlined a British festival already this summer, topping the bill at Outbreak in London a few weeks back, and armed with a bunch of new songs from their recent, almostTop 10-charting, album Never Enough, this is all set up to be a good one.
In the end, a “good one” is a hell of an understatement. This is a generational, once in a lifetime moment for a heavy band at a festival that has an awkward history with rock, punk and metal bands. The list of genuinely alternative guitar bands to play Glasto in this millennium is small, the list who utterly smash it, even tinier… it’s basically just Metallica and Queens of the Stone Age. Now it’s Turnstile too.
Opening with the new album's slow, languid and woozy title track maybe eases those who were just curiously casual about the band into a false sense of security, but the second Turnstile hammer into T.L.C. (Turnstile Love Connection) it feels less like we’re in a field in Somerset and more like we’re at a hardcore show in a club in Boston. Glastonbury is wide open, with circle pits, swinging arms, kicking legs, bodies moving and, amazingly, everyone singing every word back to frontman Brendan Yates.
What’s even more incredible is that the energy and the enthusiasm for this band never drops, in fact it actually seems to be getting wilder and more manic the longer the set continues. Yates spin kicks and barks at the crowd, egging them on, bassist Franz Lyons stands at the lip of the stage, bobbing his head, grinning from ear to ear as the carnage unfolds in front of him and guitarists Pat McCrory and Meg Mills peel out the most instantaneous, melodic punk rock riffs since Bad Brains were at their peak.
Conquering a festival the size and scale of Glastonbury is completely unheard of for a hardcore band. We are genuinely in uncharted territory here. Most bands would surely be overwhelmed by it, they’d surely second guess themselves or show some sign of nerves, but Turnstile, not a bit of it. They even chuck in Keep it Moving from their 2013 debut Step to Rhythm and Drop from it 2015 follow up Non-Stop Feeling back to back. Two proper, crunchy, careering hardcore punk songs. For a few minutes it sounds like Biohazard or Bane have invaded the biggest festival in the planet. Obviously, that would make most Glasto attendees run for cover… but all the way back to the sound desk they’re still losing their shit. How in the fuck has this happened?
Well, it’s because Turnstile are just a brilliant band, and the ultimate Trojan horse for hardcore invading the mainstream. The likes of Dull, Seeing Stars, Mystery and Holiday are so unique in the genre they came from, catchy, poppy and hook-filled, whilst still equally being stomping, powerful arse rattlers.
By the time the Baltimore quintet bid us farewell with the gargantuan one-two punch of Blackout and Birds it’s gone from being a good time, to a genuinely legendary set, to a flag defiantly planted firmly in the ground for heavy music. Yates jumps into the crowd to high five as many people as he can after the set end, as it appears even he know what the entire world would have seen today. Turnstile are rock's future, and this is a milestone performance that will be spoken about in hushed tones for a very, very long time.
