The Slut Club @ Cyprus Avenue, Cork, Ireland 19/09/2018

The Slut Club took on Cyprus Avenue as headliners for the first time, bringing Messying and Ghostking Is Dead along for support.

The Slut Club always know how to throw a party. Having Messying and Ghostking Is Dead joining them, the diverse line-up was never going to disappoint. The Messying trio opened up the night with their whacky style, performing infront of a backdrop of RTE’s iconic show, Reeling in the Years.

Ghostking Is Dead is the captivating project of Cork-based producer, Matt Corrigan. After Messying’s party-starting set, Corrigan and co decided to bring Cyprus Avenue on a surreal trip.

Opening with ‘No Light’, the song had an element to Foals’ sound on their What Went Down album. Then Corrigan began to sing and if you hadn’t heard Ghostking is Dead before, that bellowing voice will blow you away the first time you hear it.

The set transitioned from wild summer party moods to chilling in the sun vibes, best captured during ‘Native Tongue’, where the sun-soaked guitar-lines floated around the packed venue. Then new song ‘Tokyo’ set to feature on the new EP expected out in October, could draw you into a moment of reflection and then the next verse invoking a singalong.

Their set came to a whirlwind end as ‘Cruelty’ lured the crowd into a false sense of security, before unleashing into a rip-roaring whirlwind of sound. The explosive instrumental was a thrilling close.

While Storm Ali was making sure we all knew that summer is gone, The Slut Club brought some sunshine vibes back to Cork. The psych-rock trio seized the moment, with uplifting songs like ‘Honeytripping’ and then turning a tough subject in drug abuse, into an infectious indie song with ‘Bad News’.

Frontman Keiran Hurley and bassist Aidan Lynch, ever the showmen, thrived off one another and the energy emitting from the crowd. Between Hurley’s regular outbursts of screaming “What’s the fuckin’ craic” or dancing around the stage with Sally the Lobster.

While Lynch would invoke the crowd to clap along and failed attempts to get them to pop with their mouths. By having fun themselves, it sent the Cyprus Avenue crowd into hysterics.

It’s still early days for The Slut Club but this is a band that are bursting with exciting songs and already execute them in spectacular fashion on stage.