Snapped Ankles – Bada Duüm – Coventry – Live Review

Snapped Ankles – Bada Duüm – The Tin Music and Arts – Coventry – 16th May 2025

The last time we witnessed Snapped Ankles was a Supersonic Festival on the hottest day of the year in an old glass roofed warehouse in Digbeth, they made no concessions to the heat and still had the forest cladding on. This time it’s an altogether cooler affair at a sold out venue in Coventry and we are anticipating great things form them.

As usual, when the venue is the Tin, I meet the Photographer in the tap house where we realise that we are wearing matching outfits… very poor start. We meet up with a few more like minded individuals and realise that we need to head up to the venue and stop chatting. Both rooms are pretty full and Bada Duüm is in full swing. Standing at the front of a stage covered in electronic mayhem they are coaxing techno from a mac book, it’s bass heavy beats and bleeps and it moves around enough to keep it interesting. People are already moving to the beat. It gets higher pitched and then drops into dub madness. It’s not breakneck speed, it’s just right, an excellent start to the evening.

Snapped Ankles have a sheet pinned up at the back of the stage with Hard Times Furious Dancing printed across it, I can’t sum up the night any better than that really. The band come onstage with hi viz jackets and camouflage netting over their heads, each sporting a head torch that glows out into the green fog swirling around the stage. The vocalist has a head torch, a brilliantly lit up necklace and two trees as mic stands. He says something but it’s so distorted I can’t understand him and then the drummer starts, the synths rise up and the sound builds, it carries on building and then they let go. The drummer takes it up to another level and the crowd are dancing. Singing over an electro groove and it is ace! It blends into a hypnotic coolness and then a huge throbbing rhythm erupts and they are halfway to being classic Lemmy era Hawkwind and halfway into a Techno madness cycle. It’s monstrous and the crowd are getting even more into it. They loosen it up a little and it’s got a poppy dancy electronic technological feel now and if there’s any justice in the world at all they should be massive. They lurch back into a huge psych out and my heads off into the clouds.

They tell us to Rise Up! Talking up the crowd into a funky bass synth line and drums and the singer is out in the audience, the groove is making my hips shudder now and it’s wiggly, woozy and brilliant. It brings to mind the spirit of the Talking Heads. There’s a blitzed fellow in a Black Flag shirt falling into everyone around us now and the band have hooked even further into the funky, punky groove. It’s as hard as nails and bloody tight. One of the band is playing his synth on his shoulder as he runs past me into the crowd and it’s insane, just what my head needs right now.

The beat stutters as the bass hum rises and the vocals are shouted out. It’s like crusty anarcho punk had a kid and it has grown up half defending the forests and half in the madness of raves on common ground resulting in a perfect mix.

A strobe flashes as the smoke pours out and the drummer is furiously creating a beat, the synths create an electronic chaotic anarchy and the crowd go bonkers. It stutters and the bass kicks in hard as the psychedelic rises higher. The singer leans out over the front of the stage, a staff like tree in each hand, illuminated by the lights around his neck and sings, turning this instantly into a punk gig, another throbbing glitching beat drives us on and on. The bass turns even more dub heavy and the beat shudders and stutters, the synths make you think that they have picked up guitars and bass but it’s just samples, but bloody hell they are good sounds. My friend has just danced past me bemoaning her lack of MDMA, the beats and wobbly synth take the crowd by the scruff of the neck again and shake them up. The drummer massages his wrists as the singer speaks between songs and then he’s back at the beat. It’s ferocious and infectious.

They stop and there’s a huge cheer. The singer asks us to imagine sunlight in the forest, then a beach. He gets half the crowd doing the sound of the sea and the other half are seagulls, and then the stray dogs of Porta Ven Tura in there too. A synth plays, high and clear, the drums and bass start too, the vibrations spread and the people dance again. The vocal makes it a pagan chant over the music and it’s transformed from just music into something more, something mesmerising and something that matters. Dance because sometimes that’s all you can do, the groove is all you have, as they say, Hard Times, Furious Dancing.

Yelps, mayhem and noise erupt and once again I’m moving and grinning. They tell us to go back to the woods and a weird electro stuttering wibble synth and a hard core beat thunders underneath, the bass and synths smash on top and my mind is washed out by the sound. It swings down to dub infused bass and drum rim shot ricochets as the singing flows over it. The drums turn thunderous yet again and the synths swirl into the green smoke onstage and, as quickly as they arrive, they are gone. Bloody Wonderful. What an absolute treat of a gig.

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Snapped Ankles