The Menzingers perform a fitting, emotional roller-coaster ride at London’s Kentish Town Forum.

It’s a big old blurry mess, unrelated to any of the bands in particular, this relates to our journey to the Kentish Town Forum, where our lack of spectacles plus a minor sedating amount of alcoholic units left us writhing in the proverbial wind trying to find our way there. A tube, 2 hours and a blackout later, we find ourselves staring up at the elder statesmen of punk, California’s very own Lagwagon.

See the video to ‘Falling Apart’ by Lagwagon:

It’s a solid start from the five-piece as they open up with two of their newer tracks from their latest album in ‘Burden of Proof’ and ‘Reign’. We are then treated to the brilliant ‘Let’s Talk About Feelings’ in full, a real superior dick swinging move if we may say so ourselves. Despite them jumping on the bandwagon of the classic anniversary album tour, this feels way less for money, and far more for pleasure. ‘Gun In Your Hand’ is rampant and relentless while the softer tracks hit harder than they should do, in the best way, as ‘The Kids Are All Wrong’ gets a solid singalong before the room descends into chaos for ole faithful ‘May 16’. In classic punk Godfathers style they end on a cover of the brilliant and rather aptly named ‘Exit’.

It seems almost a lifetime ago that The Menzingers released their first album, and if you’re reading this and you happen to be 11 years old, then that is also factually accurate. Despite the age difference between themselves and their underlings for the night, they command a packed Kentish Town Forum with enviable ease. ‘After the Party’ kicks off, well, you know, and from then on it’s happy sad vibes for the rest of the night.

See the video to ‘After The Party’ by The Menzingers:

They make us smile with the notorious sadness of ‘The Obituaries’, as the crowd sings along knowingly to the words ‘I will fuck this up / I fucking know it’; then they bring it down with a tale of lost identity and lack of hope in a shitty world as newest track ‘Toy Soldier’ soaks us with emotion and some sweaty man’s armpit. ‘Midwestern State’ hits us right in the feels again, with tales of love, loss and that little blighter university tick all the boxes in our emo market research survey.

They continue to keep us honest till the very end, as we are taken on a wonderfully crafted journey through all three of the latest albums, as ‘I Don’t Wanna Be An Asshole Anymore’ becomes ‘Gates’ becomes ‘Lookers:’ the latter to a booming chorus of voices screaming to one another and back to the band.

A final farewell quickly turns into a phenomenal encore, kicking off with the irresistibly catchy and quirky ‘Tellin’ Lies’, everyone in a mile radius of the venue must have struggled to keep from singing along. This is followed by the fist-punching, powerful ‘Bad Catholics’ which respectively, is somehow topped off by a spectacularly raw and impassioned rendition of ‘Casey’, a fittingly emotional end to what was quite the roller-coaster ride…we’re not crying, you’re crying!