Snapped Ankles made a doctrine out of rave, for a show that captured the spirit of the alternative dance scene. Performance art met the cathartic energy of post-punk, in an unreal but welcome subversion of the norm.

The set began with a throaty, wordless roar like a falling oak, and developed into a pulsing, violent – and above all, constant – clamour. The exact genre is tough to describe, and doing so requires the squashing together of words that look uncomfortable in each other’s company: ‘synth-punk’ comes close. Or perhaps ‘thrash-jazz’, or even ‘trance-rock’. Whatever you call it, the end result swept the crowd up with it for a frantic and sweaty hour.

As unorthodox as their sound was their presentation. They took to the stage covered in swampy-looking undergrowth, so you had the impression of watching Lord of the Rings’ Treebeard onstage – if Treebeard played at 140bpm. Bizarre, but effective. Apart from being very visually entertaining the costumes allowed the band to take on their characters and become completely immersed in the performance. For their part the audience were more readily able to suspend disbelief and jump on board as the band members tapped into the worship of music and dance.

They played through their debut album Come Play the Trees, just released on The Leaf Label. We described the album as an intense ride – but to see it live is another thing entirely. From the halting xylophone-style melody of the title track (literally played on synths made from branches of trees), to the circular post-punk/krautrock fusion of ‘I Want My Minutes Back’, and the primal collisions of ‘Hanging With The Moon’, the songs and sounds morphed endlessly into one another with the force of a visceral ritual. Such was the sense of pagan rapture that it would have been the most natural thing in the world had the band brought out and sacrificed a goat in one of the songs’ many climaxes.

Lead singer Paddy had a classic punk-rock lilt to his style, and frequently addressed the audience through thick new wave effects which rendered him mostly incomprehensible. The one bit we did catch was, “We’re not always this much in tune” – which seems about right. Obviously having a hilarious time front and centre, he egged on the crowd to the point where he had to deal with a stage invasion and wrestle the mic back off a shirtless man in his sixties.

The music was a long swirling maelstrom which effectively lulled the crowd into a trance, with the band, in their fearsome heathen costumes, leading the feral rites as high-priests of the party. It was as weird as it was excellent, with the room taking on the atmosphere more of a club at 2am than The Hope at 10pm.

Ben Noble

Read our Interview with the band.
Read our review of Come Play The Trees.

Website: snappedankles.com
Facebook: facebook.com/SNAPPEDANKLES
Twitter: twitter.com/snappedankles