Billy Talent
Well well well. You’d probably forgive Billy Talent, with this many miles on the clock, for losing a smidgen of their intensity in the live arena. Thirteen years since their debut record the founding members have just hit their forties. It’s not a stretch to imagine many of those who lived their formative teenage years through that trilogy of distinctive Canadian punk albums are now settling into the rhythms of regular adult life. Ah, it gets us all, kids. But fuck it. Ben Kowalewicz isn’t having any of it. The Talent throttle is as responsive as ever and it’s pressed firmly to the floor as the quartet set about ripping up the LCR.
Clad in red and probably more pissed off at the world than they’ve ever been, Talent deliver a feast of their distinctive treble-soaked anthems of angst. Kowalewicz tears around the stage with ferocious conviction, not so much occupying time and space as he is dominating it. Relentlessly. And that line of Ian D’Sa (plus Ian D’sa’s hair), Jon Gallant and stand-in drummer Jordan Hastings squeeze so much blood and thunder through the PA it’s a miracle of modern science the thing hasn’t combusted by the end of the set.
This is where Talent shine. It’s the unrelenting pace, the grunt, and the sense of force behind each pitched lyric, each flying riff. Through these old fan favourites like Red Flag, Devil in a Midnight Mass and Fallen Leaves have embedded themselves as essential material, but it’s a credit to the foursome that their latest releases sit snugly in the set as if they’ve always been there. From 2016’s release they reel off the crunching Ghost Ship of Cannibal Rats and Big Red Gun, the call-to-arms of Louder than the DJ, and the soaring Afraid of Heights, each pulling a flailing audience together into a mass of good will and hoarse throats. Billy Talent have plenty left to say and plenty left in the tank to say it with. And we can all be bloody thankful for that.
