The Wombats Live at Mandela Hall

Tonight, Belfast is in ruins. The Mandela Hall is packed to the brim with boozed up blokes and shitfaced students, the floors are sticky, the bar is heaving and in the toilets there is a slightly worse for wear gentleman standing at the urinals throwing up all over his Converse. Hold on a second, I think to myself, I haven’t stumbled into Doc Brown’s Delorean from Back To The Future and ended up at a GG Allin gig, have I?
The answer to that question is of course: nope, I’m actually at The Wombats. Yes, dear readers, it seems like those cheeky chappies from Liverpool have brought out the worst in Belfast and they haven’t even struck their first note yet. Cool, eh? After quite a bit of messing around, the trio finally get down to business by treating us to some high-octane sonic assaults from their debut album. All well and good, you might think, but it just doesn’t seem to click tonight. Frontman Matthew Murphy looks like he’d rather be at home watching Britain’s Got Talent than rocking out for the sold-out crowd, and at times the gaps between songs are excruciatingly long. Add in the fact that his guitar is barely audible and you have a recipe for what should be a disaster.
But when The Wombats are on form they really know how to crank it up. They hit us between the eyes with the stellar ‘Moving To New York’ and for what it’s worth, the bolshy crowd are loving it as they thrash around enthusiastically in the pit. The mass singalong of “do-do’do’s” to their final song ‘Backfire At The Disco’ is pure comedy gold, but overall we were left feeling a bit empty by the experience. Hopefully the next time they’re back they’ll have regained their mojo because – if tonight’s gig was anything to go by – there could be dark times ahead if they don’t pull their socks up.