Kill The President!

Los Brackets warmed up the trouble, Flashback turned up the temperature, and Kill The President! delivered the main event with Face The Tide. Valencia punk rock, you magnificent bastard, this was exactly the sort of night you were built for.

Friday night in Valencia, and somewhere between the first guitar chord and the last battered eardrum, civilisation appeared to be coming apart at the seams. Thankfully, nobody at Loco Club seemed particularly interested in saving it. Kill The President! had arrived to celebrate the release of their new album, Face The Tide, and the occasion called for volume, velocity and a healthy disregard for anybody who thinks live music should behave itself. With Los Brackets and Flashback providing the opening salvos, the evening was a three-band assault on the senses, served in one of Valencia's most dependable dens of musical mischief.

Forget the polished corporate concert experience, the acres of advertising, the VIP platforms and the giant screens instructing thousands of people when to raise their hands. Loco Club is a different animal altogether.

Tucked away on Carrer de l'Erudit Orellana, this beloved Valencia venue is the kind of place where the distance between the stage and the audience is measured in inches rather than football pitches, where guitar noise feels physical and where the crowd becomes part of the performance whether it intended to or not. It is an intimate room with a big reputation, and for a night celebrating melodic hardcore and punk rock, the setting could hardly have been more appropriate.

First up were Los Brackets, the Valencia punk-rock survivors who have been knocking around since 2008 and have developed a musical personality that happily ignores the instruction manual. Their self-aware, deliberately nerdy approach to pop-punk comes with a healthy dose of humour, but beneath the wisecracks lies a band that understands the fundamental mechanics of a great punk song: get to the point, make it memorable, turn up the guitars and leave the audience with something rattling around inside its skull.

Los Brackets occupy that sweet spot where melodic pop sensibilities collide with scruffy guitar-driven energy. Their music has the sort of urgency that makes you suspect they would struggle to sit still through a three-minute conversation, let alone a ballad that takes four minutes to get going. They brought the first dose of attitude to the evening, setting the wheels in motion and reminding everyone that punk rock does not require a complicated mission statement, a fashionable haircut or a degree in existential philosophy. Sometimes all you need is a decent riff, a sharp melody and the conviction to play the bloody thing.

There was also something wonderfully fitting about having a long-running local band open the proceedings. Valencia's underground scene is kept alive by musicians who continue to write, rehearse, record and turn up, even when the music industry is busy congratulating itself for discovering something that has existed in sweaty rehearsal rooms for decades. Los Brackets are part of that stubborn tradition, bringing their own melodic mischief to a bill that would gradually descend into heavier territory as the evening progressed.

Next came Flashback, the second act on a bill that refused to leave the audience sitting comfortably for long. With an Asturian melodic-hardcore identity, Flashback brought another strand of punk energy into the room, helping turn the evening from a straightforward album launch into a broader celebration of the music that exists beyond the mainstream radar.

The beauty of a three-band bill like this is that the audience gets a journey rather than three identical stops on the same musical motorway. Los Brackets brought the playful, melody-led punk-rock side of the equation, while Flashback added another dose of hardcore urgency before the night's main attraction took control. Each act helped build the atmosphere, giving the crowd time to warm up, find its feet and prepare for the record that had brought everyone together.

By the time the evening approached its headline set, the groundwork had been laid. This was not a crowd that needed a lecture about the virtues of independent music, nor did it need to be reminded that live punk works best when it feels a little dangerous around the edges. The audience had come for guitars, sweat, noise and a good Friday-night release from the daily grind, and Loco Club was obligingly supplying the necessary ingredients.

Then came Kill The President!, the Valencia melodic-hardcore outfit whose music sounds like someone has taken a collection of legitimate grievances, fed them through a distortion pedal and launched the results at the nearest available authority figure. The band have spent years building their reputation in the Levantine hardcore scene, combining fast, technically sharp musicianship with the abrasion of hardcore punk and enough melody to make the songs stick long after the ringing in your ears has subsided.

The current line-up features David on drums, Felipe on guitar, Angel on bass and Alberto on vocals, and there is a clear purpose behind the noise. Kill The President! are not simply interested in making a racket for the sake of making a racket. Their material takes aim at social injustice, environmental concerns and the comfortable complacency of the status quo, giving their aggression something more substantial to bite into. They understand that punk rock can be both a physical release and a way of telling the world that something is seriously wrong.

Their recorded history, stretching from the Citizens EP through Aftermath and Unspoken, has established the foundations for a band that values speed, precision and conviction. Now Face The Tide adds another chapter to that story, and an album-release party at Loco Club was an entirely appropriate way to introduce it to the world. No grandiose corporate launch, no velvet rope separating the important people from everyone else, just a band, a room full of people and a new record ready to be put to the test where it matters most: in front of a live audience.

A record release can sometimes feel like a polite ceremony, with musicians dutifully presenting their latest work while everyone nods appreciatively. That was never going to be the spirit of this occasion. Kill The President!'s music demands movement, attention and a willingness to engage with the material on its own terms. Melodic hardcore is a balancing act: the riffs have to hit hard, the rhythm section must maintain its forward momentum, and the melodies need to cut through the distortion without sanding away the aggression. It is a style that rewards technical ability but punishes anything that feels too comfortable.

And that is precisely why Loco Club made such a fitting home for the celebration. In a room of this size, there is nowhere for a band to hide behind spectacle. Every drum hit, guitar passage and vocal line is delivered directly into the space occupied by the audience. The musicians can see the faces in front of them, the crowd can feel the physical impact of the sound, and the whole experience becomes a shared transaction between stage and floor. It is a reminder that punk and hardcore were never supposed to be passive spectator sports.

The crowd was central to the occasion, providing the human element that separates a live album celebration from simply listening to a record at home. A packed club, a three-band bill and the collective anticipation surrounding a new release created exactly the kind of atmosphere that Valencia's underground scene thrives on.

There is a particular camaraderie to these nights, when musicians and fans inhabit the same small musical ecosystem and the distinction between performer and audience feels refreshingly thin. Everyone is there because they want to be there, not because a marketing department has informed them that this is the event of the season.

The crowd also represented something important about the continuing life of independent punk. These scenes do not sustain themselves through streaming figures and carefully manufactured online hype alone. They need people to buy tickets, turn up, support the opening acts, discover new music and give bands the opportunity to develop in front of an audience. A night like this is part concert, part community gathering and part stubborn refusal to let underground music disappear beneath the weight of the commercial machine.

Credit, too, to Loco Club, a venue that continues to provide a valuable home for music operating outside the mainstream conveyor belt. Valencia has plenty of places to go out, but rooms with the right combination of intimacy, character and commitment to live music are precious commodities. Loco Club understands the value of putting different artists on the same bill, giving local acts a stage and allowing bands with something to say to connect directly with the people who have come to hear them.

There is no need for a colossal production when the music itself has enough personality to fill the room. A guitar, a bass, a drum kit, a microphone and a crowd prepared to get involved can deliver a more satisfying evening than a mountain of expensive stage machinery. Loco Club provides the conditions for that simple equation to work, and the Kill The President! album-release party fitted comfortably into its tradition of giving independent artists room to make some noise.

The venue also offers a reminder that Valencia's musical identity is not confined to the biggest stages or the artists whose names dominate the ticketing websites. Beneath the city's major concerts and festival headlines, there is a network of clubs, promoters, musicians and fans keeping the alternative scene alive. Those people deserve attention because they are the ones doing the work when the spotlights are switched off and the big touring circus has moved on to its next destination.

Ultimately, this was Kill The President!'s night, and Face The Tide was the reason for bringing the whole operation together. The album represents another step in the band's ongoing commitment to melodic hardcore, socially conscious punk and music that refuses to confuse politeness with virtue. Their approach combines technical sharpness with raw energy, allowing the songs to carry both a musical punch and a message that reaches beyond the walls of the club.

Los Brackets and Flashback helped make the occasion a proper three-band event rather than a headline set with a couple of obligatory warm-ups. Both contributed to the evening's wider identity, offering different flavours of punk and hardcore before Kill The President! took centre stage for their new album. That variety matters, because a healthy underground scene needs more than one band doing one thing well; it needs different voices, different approaches and enough mutual support to keep the whole ecosystem moving.

And that brings us back to Loco Club, where the real value of nights like this becomes obvious. The music industry can spend endless hours discussing algorithms, engagement metrics and the next big commercial opportunity, but the underground survives through the much simpler act of people gathering in a room to experience music together. Bands make records, venues open their doors, audiences buy tickets and, for a few hours, the outside world can wait.

Kill The President! came to Valencia to celebrate Face The Tide, backed by two bands who helped set the tone and a venue perfectly suited to the occasion. It was a night built around the things punk rock does best: melody with teeth, noise with purpose and a collective refusal to sit quietly while the world carries on as usual.

No VIP nonsense, no arena-sized distractions, just three bands, a crowd and a club doing what it does best. Face The Tide has arrived, Kill The President! are still making their voices heard, and Valencia's underground continues to provide ample evidence that punk rock is nowhere near ready to shut up and behave itself.

Words and photos: Rhyan Paul