REVIEWS: Archive 45 at The Loft, Southsea

Archive 45 at The Loft in Southsea, November 26, 2016. Picture by Paul Windsor

By their own admission they are '˜big, and sexy'.

And I can’t argue with that.

Portsmouth’s very own Archive 45 played to a substantial audience of scenesters, diehards, and truebloods alike who are swept along with the charged atmosphere in the creaky venue.

Archive 45 have a back catalogue of recordings under their gunbelts and open up with phasers set to kill, drawing from this output.

Musically The band throw everything they have at the wall. They are loud and snotty, the lyrics are as sharp as a good razor cut, the guitars scratch and howl at times and contrarily work together with watertight tunefulness as do the powerhouse vocals from the colourful singer/guitarist Mike Malignant.

The methodology is simple, tough and unsinkable – Portsmouth urchins do punk.

Songs like Rocket, the crowd-slaying Strummerville and thoughtfully caustic Brixton Riots rattle the rafters. They pay tribute to a local legend in Five’N’Drive and Undertone is a homage to erm, well it isn’t Abba.

No po-faced skullduggery here. Fun, fast, and frantic high-speed punk is on the menu and it tastes very good.