Live Report: Bob Vylan welcomed with open arms at raucous and politically-charged Dublin gig

Yes. Bob Vylan chanted “Death to the IDF” at their Dublin gig. The same few bars they spat out at Glastonbury, tossing the punk duo into a deep well of visa cancellations, criminal investigations and media-fuelled moral panic.

The scandal was a confirmation of what their music is all about: politicians and establishment press in their home country, Great Lovely Britain, caring about the wrong things; focused on protecting oppressive institutions instead of their own people.

As singer Bobby (with a y) put it when he spoke to Louis Theroux recently: the chant isn't the issue - the conditions that gave birth to it are.

Predictably, the surge of outrage only made them bigger. Their 2024 album, Humble As The Sun, climbed to the top of the charts, because nothing legitimises anti-establishment music quite like Keir Starmer and Piers Morgan getting hot around their classic collars.

It also earned the band a legion of new fans, who joined plenty of old ones in a packed Vicar Street on Wednesday night. It’s not too surprising that Bob Vylan were well received in Dublin, politics considered. The pair were even brought around Leinster House by left-leaning TDs earlier in the day.

Left-leaning political views don’t automatically make good musicians though, otherwise we’d have a ska band led by Holly Cairns and Zohran Mamdani by now. But Bob Vylan slap, going someway in validating their claim to being the best boyband in Britain (if that categorisation accepts a screaming, shredded frontman and drummer trying to demolish the air between them).

They’re old-school punk. Logos made from fat strips of tape indicate a refusal to hide behind theatrical gloss. Tracks like ‘GDP’ hit hard, wrapping a Prodigy bassline around an anti-austerity rant againts the BBC boasting about growth metrics while poverty is rife. The performance feels pertinent in a country often depicted among Europe’s richest, while homelessness reaches record levels.

Bob Vylan at Vicar Street on November 26th, 2025. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

‘He’s a Man’ and the Rage Against The Machine-evoking ‘I Heard You Want Your Country Back’ tear through the red-hot room, the musings on Top Gear-era masculinity feeling extra spicy when they’re yelled by a straight-edge vegan.

On the surface, Bobby Vylan is the antithesis to the ‘Brexit Geezer’. He stretches and meditates before performing, leads a health conscious lifestyle, is black, and is staunchly left wing.

At the same time he’s inescapably British. He grew up on Lavender Hill in Ipswich, a place of lower-income suburban stasis, where, despite him citing happy memories, was also where we witnessed violence, drugs, and racism. Still, he literally wears it on his skin. The tattoos of the area on his chest reflect an unavoidable sense of attachment.

Perhaps those across the Irish Sea are so uncomfortable with this band because it forces them to face the reality their country has produced. Bob Vylan’s songs aren’t much about Palestine or the IDF at all, at least not directly. They instead deal with a struggle to belong in a place where poverty is rising and private equity is thriving, and where much of the population is difting towards fascism as a response.

Some of these themes are covered in the dubby grime-punk of ‘Dream Big’, for which he invites Karla Chubb of SPRINTS to sing Amy Taylor’s verse, much to the adoration of the Dublin audience.

Bob Vylan at Vicar Street on November 26th, 2025. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

Taking a break from the crowdsurfing and moshpitting, Bobby jokes about maybe moving to Ireland if the investigations in the UK don’t go his way: “If you see me on the street, assume I live here now,”

He also takes a moment to explain that a Bob Vylan show is as much about political speech as it is music. Someone throws up a homemade ‘Support the Boeing 3’ banner, referencing the activists who broke into Shannon and sprayed a US military plane earlier in the week.

“We heard about this lot. They sprayed an American plane, right?” says the frontman, taking the item and handing it to a roadie who drapes it over the stage equipment in the background.

“They’re following in the footsteps of some great and brave direct action individuals. I'm not too sure about whether or not we can say their names or express public support and solidarity with them. You know who we're talking about.”

There were also chants of “Fuck Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael” from onlookers.

Bob Vylan at Vicar Street on November 26th, 2025. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com

“We were walking through your Parliament today and they were the only people that ignored us the whole time,” said drummer Bobbie (with an ie). “They didn't even say hello when we walked through.”

“Bunch of fucking bastards,” continued his frontman, jokingly asking if the Independent Ireland TDs who tried to get the gig called off were in the audience.

“We're told that there's a bit of a housing crisis here and that the rent here is just as bad as it is in London at the moment,” he added. “Some of those bastards in that parliament building that we were in today have the nerve to blame it on immigrants. But it's greed, it always is greed, it always was greed and it will always be greed.”

Bobby also discussed his ongoing legal troubles, providing context over the now infamous chant, and calling out the "institutionally racist” London Met. The Dublin crowd responded with their own chants of “Death to the London Met”.

It might seem like a lot of vitriol, but Bobby V does take time to end the gig with a speech of hope. Even if you don’t agree with their views, or like their music, they’re far from being the biggest problem in the world right now.

What Bob Vylan are is the sound of the UK establishment getting smashed over the head with a mirror. It doesn’t take much for an Irish crowd to be on board with that.