Kill The President!

Valencia's punk scene is getting another shot of adrenaline on Friday, October 9, when Kill The President! take over Loco Club with Flashback and Los Brackets for a three-band collision that should have absolutely no interest in behaving itself. The doors open at 19:30, the music starts at 20:00 and Kill The President! will be using the occasion to present their new album Face The Tide, bringing their furious blend of melodic hardcore and punk rock back to one of the city's most reliable homes for loud music.

Kill The President! have been making aggressive, technically sharp punk in Valencia for years, combining the speed and abrasion of hardcore with enough melody to make the songs stick around after the bruises have disappeared. Their Bandcamp material carries the same DNA, with tracks such as ‘Unspoken’ throwing social anger, environmental concerns and a healthy distrust of the status quo into a wall of melodic hardcore. The current line-up features David on drums, Felipe on guitar, Angel on bass and Alberto on vocals, and their recorded output stretches back to the Citizens EP, through Aftermath and Unspoken, with new material continuing the story.

The new record, Face The Tide, gives the evening its central purpose, but this isn't going to be a polite album presentation where everyone stands around listening attentively before going home for an early night. Kill The President!'s whole musical vocabulary is built around speed, weight and momentum, and their live reputation has been forged in exactly the sort of small-room environment where punk works best. The Loco Club is not a giant arena where the audience becomes a distant sea of heads; it is the sort of room where the band can see exactly who is losing their shit down the front.

Then there is Flashback, adding another angle to the evening, while Los Brackets bring their own particular brand of guitar-driven chaos into the mix. Los Brackets have been around since 2008 and describe themselves with the sort of self-deprecating humour that suggests they have long since accepted that punk rock and adulthood are fundamentally incompatible. Earlier this year they appeared at the revived Spring Roll Fest alongside F.A.N.T.A. and Sugus, where their deliberately nerdy pop-punk approach sat comfortably alongside some of the Spanish punk scene's more established survivors.

That makes for an interesting bill because nobody needs to spend the entire evening listening to variations on exactly the same flavour of punk. Kill The President! bring the hardcore muscle, Los Brackets bring the melodic, mischievous side of the equation and Flashback add another ingredient to the mix. It is the sort of three-band bill that makes considerably more sense in a sweaty club than it would on a glossy festival poster.

For Kill The President!, however, this is their night. The band have been part of Valencia's underground hardcore scene for years, and their music has always had one foot planted firmly in the idea that punk should actually have something to say. Their songs tackle social and environmental issues, but they deliver those ideas with enough velocity and aggression to prevent proceedings from turning into a lecture.

There is also something appropriately old-school about the whole setup. Three bands, one room, cheap enough tickets to make the decision fairly painless and a Friday night in Valencia with no need for lasers, VIP platforms or a twelve-metre video wall. Advance tickets are €12, rising to €15 at the door, which leaves plenty of money for beer and the inevitable post-gig argument about which band kicked the most ass.

Loco Club has become one of those Valencia venues where you can reliably expect to find something interesting happening just beyond the mainstream radar, and this particular Friday fits neatly into that tradition. The club is at Calle Erudito Orellana 12, only a short walk from the historic centre and close to Ángel Guimerà metro, making it dangerously easy to get there and considerably harder to justify staying home.

So if your idea of a Friday night involves guitars turned up too loud, drums played too fast, melodies fighting with distortion and absolutely no requirement for anybody on stage to look remotely sensible, Loco Club has the answer. Kill The President! are bringing Face The Tide to Valencia, Flashback and Los Brackets are joining the assault, and by the time the first pint hits the floor it should be fairly obvious that nobody came here to sit quietly at the back.

For tickets and more information: Loco Club