There was a Wildhearts album once called “Riff After Riff After Motherfucking Riff”. Had Ginger been in the room for Wall’s support slot with Gnome, he’d have approved, because that is pretty much the whole point here.
The Oxford-based two-piece don’t do much talking, and they certainly don’t do lyrics. In fact, the only song they bothered introducing was their take on Karma To Burn’s “Nineteen”, which makes perfect sense. Wall are Ryan and Elliot Cole from Desert Storm, and they let the music do the heavy lifting.
What music, too. Groove in huge lumps, power by the bucketload, and lead work that has a proper Corrosion Of Conformity feel to it. There’s even a bit of Led Zeppelin in the swing of the drumming, and the shifts in tone stop it all becoming a blunt instrument.
Given the Karma To Burn connection as former touring buddies, you can hear the lineage. But this never feels borrowed. It just feels like two blokes locked into a riff and absolutely loving every second of it. Sometimes that is all you need.
It is tempting to imagine some Dickensian world where Oliver Twist wanders into a riff factory, cap in hand, and whispers: “please sir, can I have some more?”
Only in this version the men behind the counter are, as they put it on Spotify, “three normal-sized Belgians in silly hats”, as their Spotify profile has it, and their answer is not only yes, but an almighty avalanche of thunder, groove and glorious nonsense.
That, more or less, is Gnome.
At KK’s Steel Mill tonight, Rutger Verbist on vocals and guitar, Geoffrey Verhulst on bass and Egon Loosveldt on drums turned Wolverhampton into the daftest, heaviest place on earth for an hour or so. Then “Duke of Disgrace” arrives and whatever sense of normality there was is obliterated on impact. “Let’s have some fun,” says Verbist. They were not lying. The thing lurches into life with a groove so filthy it feels like it ought to come with a warning label.
From there, Gnome do what Gnome do best: pile riff upon riff until resistance seems pointless. “Wenceslas” is ridiculous in the way all the best heavy music is ridiculous, and by the end of it you would probably put your rod wherever they told you to. “Jebediah Supreme” comes with an invitation to join the cult, introduced as “this one’s an oldie,” and for all the absurdity there is real muscle here too, with the rhythm section given room to flex. Loosveldt and Verhulst are not just keeping the engine running, they are making the whole daft machine breathe fire.
“Golden Fool” is all unhinged wail and sideways energy, while “Blacksmith” comes with the immortal line that if the singing sounds like a dog being strangled, well, that is rock and roll. Then, wallop, it turns into metal. Proper metal. That is one of the joys of Gnome: just when you think they are being playful, they smack you in the chops with something genuinely enormous.
“John Frum” shifts the mood, slower and more choral, and shows there is more to this lot than novelty hats and giant riffs, although they have both of those in abundance. Then “The Gods are Evil” produces one of those sights you wish you could bottle and keep: a room full of people in gnome hats, heads banging as they scream the title back at the stage. There are plenty of gigs that are enjoyable. There are fewer that produce images you know you will still be smiling about in a week. This was one of them.
“Antibeast” comes and somewhere in the chaos the bass player removes his hat, which frankly feels like the sort of thing that ought to be referred to the authorities. “The Ogre” proves once again that original metal is much harder to do than people think, but Gnome make it feel effortless. “Rotten Tongue” is heavy and angry, dedicated to politicians, and when Verbist explains that this is exactly why he loses his voice, you believe him. There is venom in it.
Then there is “Old Soul”, introduced with a nod to “my lovely wife,” and it lands like the sort of chorus that could shake the foundations of a stadium. “Kraken Wanker” is an absolutely thunderous noise, the kind that seems less played than unleashed, before “Ambrosius” sends everyone home on one final groove, the whole room lost inside it. And there is something beautiful about that, really. Heavy music at its best is communal. It is a shared surrender. Gnome understand that completely.
Riffs. That is the thing. However funny they are, however daft the hats, however much they lean into the absurd, none of it works without the songs. And the songs are monstrous. The world is getting worse by the day, so thank heaven for three Belgians dressed like this turning up with some of the best riffs on the planet. Gnome should be the biggest metal band in the world.
Maybe the world is not ready yet. Saying that, Wolverhampton was.
