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At some point in the 1990s, conscious of the damage that was being done to performers and audiences alike by excessively loud gigs, and mindful of not wishing to be seen to be inciting bands to turn the volume up even further, Guinness World Records discontinued their 'Loudest Band in the World' category. Previously, artists including The Who, Deep Purple, Motorhead, Kiss and Manowar had been acknowledged for registering concert volumes at high decibel levels, which always seemed somewhat arbitrary, bearing in mind that there are different criteria for measuring volume at gigs, and that all these artists are firmly in the rock mainstream. Did Kiss arena concerts ever feel louder than club gigs by Merzbow, or Atari Teenage Riot, or Melt Banana or Converge? I can tell you categorically that they didn't, not even close.
Anyways, this is a debate without any definitive answer, whatever the dusty record books might suggest. But from a personal point of view, in 40 years of attending gigs, I have never seen / heard a band louder than Bucket.
You can totally be forgiven for asking 'Who?' at this point. Although the Dublin trio have been around for five years, and have performed at festivals in the US and mainland Europe, they've been something of a 'best kept secret' on the incredibly fecund Irish music scene. But 2026 could be the year that the word-of-mouth buzz around the band grows from a whisper to a scream. Their new five-track EP, Mosiac, released last month, is a fabulously intense listen, and this, their debut London headline show, is one that anyone in attendance will remember for a long time to come, making My Bloody Valentine's recent Royal Albert Hall show seem like a Belle And Sebastian acoustic set by comparison.
Kicking off with Music, from last year's Muck EP, Bucket immediately threaten to make the walls and ceiling of this subterranean east London venue cave in. If you want musical reference points, think Zeni Geva, A Place to Bury Strangers, John Zorn's Naked City or a free-jazz Chat Pile: if those references are a bit niche, simply cast your mind back to the head-fuck that was hearing The Dillinger Escape Plan, or Botch, or Mr. Bungle, or even Slipknot for the first time, and you'll be in the same emotional space. Songs such as Crack Alley and Nonsense sound like nailbombs exploding, as guitarist/vocalist Cian Dahdouh, sporting an old-school Black Flag Slip It In t-shirt, shoves his microphone into his mouth and winds the cable around his neck like a noose. It's a lot. But utterly electrifying. All the while, the audience - mohicaned punk lifers, 6Music dads, young women dressed like they're en route to East London's smartest new pop-up restaurants - throw themselves around the room like they're aboard the top deck of the Titanic, post-iceberg.
Bucket's summer schedule will take them to festivals in Holland and Belgium, to Dublin and Belfast next month in support of Knocked Loose, and to ArcTanGent in August. If you have the chance to see them, don't miss out. But trust me, you'll be hearing more from them, like it or not.
Bucket setlist - Sebright Arms, London
Music
DNB
Hash Browns
Nonsense
Budgie
Who Knows
Living Bridge
Nails
Crack Alley
Memento
