SWG3 has hosted many of my favourite bands but none have entered my heart as swiftly as the merry waltz that was Osees’ 2025 Glasgow stop. A headlong hurtle into the untamed future of rock and roll, powered by duelling drum kits and the unhinged howl of a man who sounds like he’s seen the end and decided to dance with it.

Opening act Container was a full on spectrum of effects pedals, glitchy midi input and analogue noise. The set reminded me of catching Peaches early in in her career but sans any lyrics and heapfuls of out and out noise.

The opener, “Withered Hand” (from 2015’s Mutilator Defeated At Last) skulked in on a riff like a wounded animal dreaming of Black Sabbath and Suicide’s lovechild. It was immediate: the band weren’t here to court you—they were here to conscript you. And I was first in line for the cult robes.

At the helm of this glorious sonic cult is John Dwyer—mad monk, ringmaster, and guitarist-as-shaman. His vocals swerved with chaotic grace from lullaby whispers to manic, jaw-snapping growls, like Bowie throwing punches in a haunted house. Every utterance teetered between nursery rhyme and nervous breakdown. His guitar—looped, loopier, and always feral—was less an instrument and more an interstellar lightning rod. Synth beside him like some relic from a lunar lab experiment. Noise sculpted as if with a Nobel-winning mind, bent on pure psychedelic mayhem.

Then came “Ticklish Warrior”, and the war drums kicked in. Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone—the twin-engine rhythm section—do not play drums. They summon them. There’s a military precision in their madness, like two berserker generals hammering orders through the fog of sound. Their syncopated aggression in this track made the crowd bounce like jelly on a jet engine. You felt it in your chest cavity, in your sinuses, in your bloody DNA.

Tim Hellman, steady as a condemned man’s heartbeat, anchored the chaos with basslines as heavy as existential dread, while Tomas Dolas on synths and guitar swirled in and out like some trickster deity—delicate and devastating in the same breath.

By “The Daily Heavy,” Dwyer had completely dissolved into movement—leaping, kicking, spinning with the wild abandon of a B-movie kung-fu hero on a sugar high. This was not for the faint of heart or soft of shoe. This was primal, sweaty, unrepentant rock theatre.

And then, a surprise cover of “Final Solution” (yes, that Pere Ubu scorcher), reimagined like IDLES had picked up where Devo passed out. Frenetic, fractured, flammable. It bled post-punk energy into the concrete.

The late-set run—“Encrypted Bounce,” “Rogue Planet,” and “Web”—was a trifecta of unrelenting tension and glorious breakdown. The crowd? A maelstrom of limbs and liberation. With an veritable onslaught of bodies flying over the barrier during “Web” only to be bounced back into the audience by security seconds later. Someone shouted, “I AM WARRIOR!” and I swear to God the air changed temperature.

And then… “C.” A final track. Dwyer threw himself into the noise, bent his body like a human question mark, and unleashed a feedback storm that felt like it could level ten city blocks. It was over. We were ruined.

The Osees (OCS? Thee Oh Sees? Oh Sees? – what is a name to a beast that shifts its form with every moon?) are not a band. They are a musical shapeshifting hybrid, refusing to be static because they know the truth: stagnation is death. This tour, with its thunderclap rhythm section, effects pedal altar, and tightly honed chaos, is their most distilled form yet.

Article: Angela Canavan