We’re only two songs into the support set from feral Dublin post-punks Gurriers when half the band are in the audience inciting some wild circle pits. “There are a lot of fucking Irish people here, Jesus,” comments frontman Dan Hoff, swimming through a sea of Tricolour. It feels like an early-doors lock-in when the fiery new genocide-tackling single ‘Erasure’ invites the first arena-wide chants of “free, free Palestine”. Their set is soon followed by an Adam Curtis-esque video by Massive Attack highlighting the plight of Gazans, the war crime accusations levelled at Israel, and the complicity and hypocrisy of Western Governments. Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall then arrive on stage themselves flanked by director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ben Jamal to deliver an impassioned speech to hail tonight’s headliners as “a band who refused to be silenced for their solidarity with the Palestinian people”.
Kneecap have come a long way from their last riotous headline tour, a journey via Coachella that saw their stance on Israel amplified globally and caught the crosshairs of much powerful critics, and via the UK courts after Mo Chara – real name Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh – attracted terror charges after accusations of waving a Hamas flag and saying “Up Hamas, Up Hezbollah” at a gig gone by last year.
He maintains he didn’t know what the flag was when he picked it up and the comments were a joke in character, and that he shouldn’t need to explain satire to avoid being banged up by a government who he says are the real terrorists for their part in the ongoing bloodshed. Kneecap and their supporters claim this all been an attempt to muzzle them. It hasn’t worked, has it? “Fair fucking play,” says Moglai Bap looking at the packed out crowd of DJ Provai balaclavas. “Fuck me, Kneecap at Wembley Arena? Keir Starmer must be fucking raging.” The first chants of “Fuck Keir Starmer” ring out, and we’re off. “Oh you love to see it.”
“What a year it’s been,” says an understated Mo Chara, before admitting this is “one of the most important nights of our lives”. It shows, and Kneecap give it hell. For every soapbox moment taking down Starmer, Netanyahu, the Royal Family and the visiting President Trump, there’s a bottle popping off. A ‘Sex Bomb’ sing-along, the balaclava-clad DJ Provai (“excited but pissed”) exposing his nipples and surfing the crowd, pub banter and a whole lot of pure hedonistic abandon.
From the existential ‘Better Way To Live’, the always explosive ‘Your Sniffer Dogs Are Shite’, “the first song we ever wrote in a garage back in 2017 while stoned off our heads” ‘CEARTA’ through to the brattily anthemic ‘Get Your Brits Out’ and ‘H.O.O.D.’, Kneecap effortlessly flip from Irish to English language as master showmen with their tales of late nights, dark thoughts and being born on the back foot. There’s a look to the future, too. Recent singles ‘Sayonara’ and ‘The Recap’ absolutely go off, with their violent drum n’ bass bleeding in the premiere of upcoming single ‘No Comment’. It seems like Kneecap aren’t going away anytime soon.
“I wasn’t the first and I won’t be the last Irishman in court in London on trumped up terrorism charges,” says Mo Chara, while Bap looks ahead to a time when “we can put all this shit to rest and talk about what is really happening,” highlighting the situation in Gaza. “All we’re doing is filling a void that the politicians aren’t filling,” ends Mo Chara, as Bap concludes that “Music is all about people, and people is all about politics”.
You don’t pull off a gig like that on controversy alone. You need bangers and you need a culture to fill this room. Kneecap have all that, and they’re a fucking good laugh. There’s no call for violence, there’s nothing that should land someone in front of a judge, just solidarity and a rave against the dying of the light. Just 24 hours earlier in this same room, Together For Palestine put on all-star fundraiser for the cause, the biggest of its kind. It’s significant that gigs like this should happen at a time like now. The state may try to crush them, but Kneecap have a power of their own. As they spit on ‘It’s Been Ages’: “Controversy won’t phase us, we hold all the cards and they’re aces, try to protect your kids but they’ll hear us.”
Kneecap’s Wembley setlist was:
‘It’s Been Ages’
‘Amach Anocht’
‘Fenian Cunts’
‘Thart agus Thart’
‘Better Way to Live’
‘Sick in the Head’
‘Your Sniffer Dogs Are Shite’
‘Harrow Road’
‘No Comment’
‘I’m Flush’
‘I bhFiacha Linne’
‘Fine Art’
‘Rhino Ket’
‘Guilty Conscience’
‘Sayonara’
‘Get Your Brits Out’
‘C.E.A.R.T.A’
‘Parful’
‘H.O.O.D’
‘THE RECAP’