STIFF LITTLE FINGERS Sound as Vital as Ever as they Kick Off UK Tour at O2 Academy in Leeds [Photos & Show Review]

The punk community is out in force tonight as Belfast punk rock icons Stiff Little Fingers kicked off their latest UK tour at a packed O2 Academy in Leeds. It also took about thirty seconds into opener “Law and Order” to realise that both the band and the crowd were well up for this journey into the punk rock archives and, by the time the band were rattling through “Suspect Device”, things were starting to get nice and sweaty in the front few rows as fans bounced around having the time of their lives.

Here’s a live version of the song “Nobody’s Hero”… check it!

Forty years into their career, it has to be said that the Belfast band show no signs of growing old gracefully. There are songs dedicated to Simon Cowell while a particular ferocious “16 Shots” early on in the set is preceeded by an equally passionate speech by frontman Jake Burns revealing the story behind the song. The song, like the rest of the set is delivered with spit, vitriol and plenty of venom and, while most men of their age are sat at home looking forward to putting their feet up, not these hardened punk rockers who are throwing their all into the set.

While the crowd lap up every minute the Belfast gents are on stage, the pints flying and the bodies pogoing around, they do so to the sound of a band who have spent the heyday of their career living through Ireland’s troubles and, given the current social and political clusterfuck of a situation that is the UK, sound as vital and relevant as they have ever done.

The album Best Served Loud dropped on June 30, 2017.