If there’s one thing Canadian post-punk band Viet Cong understand, it’s how to lift themselves out of a hellhole. The thundering and desolate music made by this four-piece springs directly from painful experiences – specifically those of bass-playing frontman Matt Flegel and drummer Michael Wallace during their time with previous band Women. In 2010, that band ended up in an onstage brawl that led to an indefinite hiatus. Then, in 2012, their guitarist Christopher Reimer died.
Pulling together musicians who had played together on various projects – singer-songwriter Chad VanGaalen’s touring band and a Black Sabbath cover act among them – Flegel and Wallace decided to start anew. The result, after enrolling guitarists Scott “Monty” Munro and Danny Christiansen, is the rapturous, cathartic material being aired tonight.
Unconscious Melody, from their 2014 EP Cassette, uses a cymbal- and bass-driven groove to provide a deceptively mellow start, a calm before the mid-set storm that sees the whole band hunched over their instruments and thrashing at them with frenzied energy. When Wallace bashes his drum kit beneath both Christiansen and Munro’s urgent guitar lines on single Silhouettes, they sound as though they’re trying to banish their darkest moments by sweating them out.
If the crowd’s reaction is anything to go by, it works for them, too. Viet Cong occupy a space where confronting sadness and rage leads to unabashed release, and creates an electrifying and contagious sense of excitement. Near the stage, punters throw themselves against each other, while Viet Cong lurch between time signatures on March of Progress. The centrepiece is an 11-minute torrent, titled Death, requested by one hoarse-voiced audience member and delivered with a blistering intensity as Flegel howls through its verses. Anguish never sounded so satisfying.
• At Broadcast, Glasgow, on 6 February. Box office: 0141-332 7304. Then touring in UK until 8 February.
