As part of the NME Award Shows 2016 with Austin, Texas I found myself in Hackney on Friday night in order to see who was being tipped off for big things in the future. The entertainment came from headliners Together Pangea and I wasn’t disappointed.
Together Pangea hail from Santa Clarita in California and have already released three full length records. The band came to be in 2009 when long time friends William Keegan and Danny Bengston met drummer Erik Jimenez at Cal Arts. The group started off playing on campus before gigging around the area. Soon after came their first album release, Living Dummy in 2011 via Burger Records.
Friday night the band was headlining at Hackney’s Moth Club and I didn’t quite know what to expect. The evening had been fairly good so far with decent music and people seemed to enjoy the music from both bands playing before Together Pangea. Nothing would have prepared me for the atmosphere that soon emerged.
The Moth Club is small and looks like the kind of place you play bingo in rather than gigs but somehow the mosh pit felt unrehearsed and perfectly suitable. Together Pangea took the stage and looked quite posed. The band kicked off the gig with I Looked in Too and quickly the place went crazy. The crowd, who was clearly for the most part made of hardcore fans, was there to have fun and didn’t waste any time showing its appreciation of the music. The Moth Club did indeed transform into an enormous mosh pit and the band seemed completely blase about it all.
I absolutely loved the atmosphere and any skeptic seemed to be won over by the end of the night; I even overheard security praising the band at the end. It didn’t take me long to start dancing and singing along to tracks like Badillac or If You’re Scared. The music was mainly from the new album but old classics too. It was good, the songs were catchy and infectious and everyone was smiling; it was hard not too as well. I loved hearing the Offer and Too Drunk to Cum but my favourite track of the night was River, which made me dance furiously for two solid minutes.
The band was good with the crowd and frontman William Keegan even treated us with a singalong in the crowd, which I thought was quite ballsy with the mayhem surrounding me. The level of musicianship was good too, the sound was big, much bigger than on CD, and it was aptly melodic with a bit of nostalgia.
It has been a while since a gig and band truly excited me and Together Pangea did just that. I left Moth Club with a smile on my face and have been listening to the band’s back catalogue ever since and hoping to catch the band again this summer at festivals.
Watch the music video for Offer below:
[brid video=”27240″ player=”531″ title=”together PANGEA “Offer” Official Music Video”]
Track listing: 1. I Looked in Too 2. Does He Really Care 3. Sick Shit 4. Badillac 5. Praise 6. If You’re Scared 7. Make Myself True 8. Friends of Nothing 9. Offer 10. Better Find Out 11. Awful 12. On It 13. My Head is on too Tight 14. Too Drunk to Cum 15. River 16. Snakedog
Together Pangea played at Moth Club on 5th February 2016.
