Bambara played Great Scott – 2/22

Brooklyn noisemakers Bambara headlined Saturday night at Allston’s Great Scott with support from Way Out and Kal Marks. 

On the heels of their excellent new record Stray, punk-blues five piece Bambara rolled into a packed Great Scott this weekend with an air of confidence. I’ve caught the band in well-matched opening slots for Liars and Idles in the past few years and always come away impressed, but there was something different – and even more striking – about watching them command a stage of their own.

The band’s style teeters between moody grooves and explosive violence, atop which vocalist Reid Bateh weaves bloodsoaked tales of debauchery and death. The production really comes into focus on Stray, a collection of songs that might place the band in Lynch’s Roadhouse with their shadowy horn arrangements and eerie backing vocals. And while some of that lush atmosphere was pared back for Saturday’s stage show, the band’s visceral presence was more than enough to compensate.

With Bateh, his twin brother Blaze on drums, and bassist William Brookshire at the helm as its core trio, Bambara ripped into a set marked by its physicality both sonically and literally. As the rest of the band crashed and raged through these pitch-black missives, the Bateh brother on mic stomped, crawled and tackled his way through a performance that echoed Nick Cave or Iceage’s Elias Rønnenfelt while still carving its own path with a jagged razor’s edge. It was undoubtedly among the most throttling live sets the city has seen in this young year.

Opening the evening were Boston’s reliably earsplitting and off-kilter hometown favorites Kal Marks and Providence post-punks Way Out, whose pulverizing lockstep rhythms belied a lengthy gap between shows prior to Saturday. Check out photos of all three sets below.