It’s a lively crowd on Saturday at Richmond’s Corner Hotel for Brisbane punk Rockers Dune Rats.
The band, touring their OLD MATES album, are industry veterans at this point having been on the scene since the early 2010’s. Their latest album is a full circle moment for the band as it collects tracks from their first three EPs alongside a new single SHARKS and a re-recording of fan fave FUCK IT! And they’re keen to get back to the chaotic nights of their early pub and bandroom gigs when they were first coming up.
Starting off the night were garage punk duo Good Sniff. These up and comers from the Bellarine peninsula gave it their all to start the night on a high!
They were swiftly followed by Surf Trash. The Newcastle band offer the unique twist that their drummer is their lead singer.
Dune Rats took the stage around 10:30, at which point the venue had busied up nicely. You know it’s going to be a messy night when the band bring a case of beer on stage and proceed to throw a collection of inflatables (that would have considerably irked Shirley Manson) into the crowd as they hit the first chords of their opening song.
And drunken debauchery was definitely the flavour of the night. All in good fun of course. The band and the crowd got progressively livelier as the set went on, with a rowdy mosh pit taking up around half of the Corner Hotel’s standing area and a showing a blatant disregard for the Corner’s lightly enforced no crowd surfing rule. In many ways I was glad it wasn’t sold out, as anyone who’s even been in a sold out Corner show knows, there’s barely room to breathe, and I think that would have taken something away from the night.
My partner summed it up nicely when he said anything the band lacked in technique they made up with in energy. And that rang so true. If you’re here for technical proficiency Dune Rats are not your band, but if you want to get lost in some music and jump around like tomorrow doesn’t matter, this is the gig for you! The band were bouncing around on stage from start to finish, hyping up the audience non-stop and generally ensuring everyone had a great time. I loved the little shoutouts to fans they recognised from previous shows and getting people up on the stage. For the die hard fans it’s those moments of recognition for their support that make the evening, and from the sea of Dune Rats T-shirts filling the room it’s obvious they’re not short of a diehard fan or two.
If you want an indication of the energy of the night, Dune Rats smashed through 20 songs in their one hour set. Yet it didn’t feel rushed. As mentioned, they took time to engage the audience and thank people, and also brought out support act Surf Trash for a joint song. The fans really bought into the nostalgia the band are chasing on Old Mates and Dune Rats seemed to thrive in just getting up on the stage and having a great time! They’ve acknowledged at times the shifting energy around the band as they’ve become Australian punk mainstays over the years, the fact that the fun and ease of those early days can quietly slip away as you become more established. So it was great to see that they could still get on stage and rock out seemingly without a care in the world!
Find information on Dune Rats upcoming tour dates here.