Knives: Old Blue Last, London

Knives
Old Blue Last, London
20th March 2025

Bristol band Knives visit London to perform a free show as a warm-up for the forthcoming Great Escape Festival in Brighton. Keith Goldhanger (words) and Robyn Skinner (photos) report back.

There’s a sign on the unlocked venue door saying that it will open at 7.30pm. We wait patiently to enter East London’s Old Blue Last featuring three bands warming up for May’s Great Escape Festival in Brighton. Knives are due on at 7.45pm (unfortunately we don’t have time for the other two bands tonight because some of us have homes to go to). By 7.40pm one eager punter boldly opens the door and whether the venue is ready or not we’re going in.

There’s a couple of dozen people in the room standing and staring at this Bristol six-piece already on stage, not really doing anything except (probably) discussing their soundcheck that may have ended thirty seconds ago. At 7.45pm precisely an almighty eruption occurs. It’s the sound of Knives in all their glory, the band we saw take the roof off in Fuel at Cardiff’s Sŵn Festival last October, the band we’ve been trying unsuccessfully to contact to tell them how brilliant we think they are, and the band that anyone lucky enough to catch inside any one of the UK’s small venues will love for whatever thirty or forty minutes in their lives they can commit to.

Such is the energy this band have it’s debatable whether they themselves could last much longer than this amount of time. Knives are a band that jump around, scream, shout and can leave observers out of breath just by watching. It’s thrilling to observe and they appear to be a bunch of people who are really having fun doing what they do; not simply going through the motions before forcing a T-shirt in your face, taking photos of each other and gathering everyone’s email address before leaving. They also appear slightly surprised by the joy the growing crowd inside The Old Blue Last are generating back at them. They’re here one minute going crazy, and forty minutes later they’re gone…..disappearing into the night to heaven knows where (probably back to the West Country).

It’s been another magnificent performance. Exciting, loud, messy, fist-pumping euphoric (post) punk rock music with a pumping bass and honking saxophone. Multiple voices that ebb and flow at different levels; not too serious and not at all silly.

With an album about to be released to the world later this year on the Marshall label (Therapy?, Nova Twins … the amps and speakers we’ve known about for decades) it won’t be long before the crowds are cramming themselves inside venues in larger numbers to witness these thrilling moments the band serve up.

It hasn’t taken too long for this room to fill up once the band were in full flow and when it does it’s noted that we aren’t the only people in the room being swept off our feet. It’s another free show, and one that those of us who can’t afford many of the non-free shows in the capital in 2025 cannot ignore (especially if we feel the need to go out every night and know do what we’re looking for). And this evening it’s enough to send us home happy before the Nine O’clock News starts.

Knives gigs are a thrill a second: a relentless cacophony of glorious noise that shakes the foundations of the venue in a way we’ve not experienced since Fucked Up appeared here many years ago. They’ve given us all we needed for one evening.

Go and see them as soon as you can, fasten your seat belts and prepare yourselves for an unforgettable ride.

As someone once said: the best things in life are free.

~

More Knives information can be found here

Words by Keith Goldhanger. More writing by Keith on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive. You can also find Keith on Facebook  Instagram and Bluesky.

Photos by Robyn Skinner