Sodakill arrive first with the sort of big, heavy noise that makes the Art School feel considerably smaller than it is. The Stockholm four-piece — Julia Sjöström on vocals and guitar, Beatrice Nordling on guitar, Astrid Carsbring on drums and Elsa Presto on bass — have been making their particular strain of “spicecore” since forming in 2022, throwing punk, metal, grunge and rock into the same industrial blender and then turning the thing up until it threatens to shake itself apart. Their live energy is raw and unfiltered, the sort of performance that makes you want to see what happens when they are given a festival crowd and absolutely no reason to behave. I cannot wait to see them at Tenement Trail next week. 

Then come Gallus, and suddenly the whole evening feels less like a gig than Glasgow has been given temporary permission to misbehave indoors.

We’ve been simping after Gallus ever since we caught them headline the River Stage at TRNSMT, circa 2024, and then followed them to the after-party at McChuills, where the band provided an even more fervent show than their headline appearance. Since then, their gaudy, stompy, swampy noise music has found its way into the hearts of an ever-growing number of Glaswegians, something abundantly clear from tonight’s sold-out Art School. This is a room of roughly 850 people, a sizeable venue by any reasonable measure, yet Gallus have somehow retained the feeling of a band who might still be playing somewhere with a leaking ceiling and three people standing between the toilets and the stage. 

Gallus are, after all, Glasgow through and through. Barry Dolan is on vocals, Eamon Ewins and Gianluca Bernacchi on guitars, Paul Ewins on drums and Russell Baxter on bass. The band was formed by cousins Paul and Eamon with Dolan, before Bernacchi joined.

The occasion is particularly significant because Gallus have now released their second album, Life Is Bliss, and the sold-out audience reflects the sense that the band are going from strength to strength. Released only a week before tonight’s show, it is a record rooted in Glasgow: anxiety, community, identity, upheaval and the uncomfortable feeling that the city you know is becoming something you no longer entirely recognise. Yet Gallus have no interest in presenting any of this with a face like a slapped arse. They make serious things funny and ridiculous things strangely moving. 

The opening song, “Donnie Murdo”, gives way to “Au Contraire” and “Marmalade”, and immediately the Gallus formula becomes apparent: take the emotional directness of the Offspring, the muscular stomp of IDLES, the wiry post-punk intelligence of Yard Act and the self-conscious Glaswegian humour of a night spent drinking in a pub where everyone knows everyone else, then set fire to the resulting mixture.

There is a pleasingly adolescent quality to Gallus, but it is not childish. Maybe because the music the create reminds me so much of what I would have listened to in my bedroom when I was 15. Music with blunt emotional hooks and the sense that a serious grievance should ideally be accompanied by something you can shout at your mates. The sheer volume of noise provides the physicality: the heavy guitars, the pounding rhythms, the sense that a song is not properly finished until somebody has thrown themselves into another person. They have the ability to turn their own misery into a punchline before anyone else gets the chance. An antidote to being raised within the Scottish school system, no doubt.

There are some technical issues tonight, including a microphone cutting out, but Gallus are not a band likely to allow a malfunctioning microphone to interrupt the evening’s general decline into chaos. Barry Dolan simply carries on, and if anything the disruption provides another opportunity to wind up the audience. Goading the crowd appears to be one of Barry’s favourite things to do.

The set moves through “Depressed Beyond Tablets”, “Stupid Dog”, “Sick Bastards”, and the audience knows exactly what to do with them. Sing, shout, jump, shove, collide. There is no great separation between performer and spectator. Gallus don’t simply play to the audience as drag them into the performance and make them responsible for whatever happens next.

“Fireflies” remains a personal favourite, partly because the line “My friends got a head disease” has stayed lodged in my brain ever since that TRNSMT appearance. Some lyrics make you think. Others simply refuse to leave. Gallus have several of the latter.

The new material sits comfortably alongside the older songs. Life Is Bliss may be more melodically expansive than the band’s debut, We Don’t Like The People We’ve Become, but it has not diluted the live ferocity. If anything, the songs give Gallus more ammunition. “Sick Bastards” is particularly well suited to this crowd: nasty, funny and sufficiently catchy to ensure that any insult can become a chorus.

I have to say the mosh pit, which develops its own understanding of civic responsibility. Pitt etiquette apparently dictates that somebody has to do a front flip or a back flip. Right? Congratulations, Gallus. Your turn is now.

This is where Dolan’s particular talent becomes most apparent. He does not look like a frontman who has spent his career cultivating an aura of mystery. He could literally be your brother’s pal, the one you have come to know and enjoy the presence of over countless packets of fags and cans of Tennents while watching the Celtic match down the local. He has the conversational aggression of someone who knows exactly which button to press because he has probably been pressing it on his friends for years.

That familiarity matters. Gallus may now be touring Europe and playing substantial festival stages, but there is still something gloriously local about them. The band came out of Glasgow’s pub and grassroots music scene, and that history remains audible in the music. Their success has not transformed them into an anonymous export product. If anything, they sound increasingly like a band who have worked out how to take Glasgow with them wherever they go. 

The final stretch is “M8”, “Fruitflies” and “Cool To Drive”, which feels about as close to a sensible conclusion as Gallus are ever likely to get. “M8” is particularly apt: the motorway is not merely a piece of infrastructure here but another symbol of the changing city, the road taking you through a Glasgow that is familiar and unfamiliar at precisely the same time, also one of the cities most hated features.

Then Barry Dolan leaves the stage, stomps through the crowd and heads downstairs towards the merch stand, where he warmly greets fans and starts selling merchandise. It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate ending. No grand rock-star exit. No disappearing behind a curtain. Just a man downstairs selling T-shirts to people he has spent the previous hour encouraging to throw themselves around the room.

Yet…the evening is not quite over. Everyone from the Art School is welcomed back to Nice N Sleazy, where the band promise to keep the party going with a selection of tunes. It gives the whole gig a feeling of brotherhood in arms, everybody back for an empty — and yes, I am showing my age here. I refuse to use the word “gaff”.

There is something deeply satisfying about watching Gallus at this particular point in their development. They have a second album, a sold-out hometown show and an audience large enough to make the Art School bounce, yet they have retained the spirit of the scruffy Glasgow band that emerged from small venues and pubs. Life Is Bliss is an album about a city changing around you, but Gallus themselves are changing too: bigger, sharper, more assured, without losing the scrappy sense that someone might nick your lighter before the encore.

The title Life Is Bliss is, naturally, taking the piss. Gallus know life is rarely blissful. Their trick is to make the misery danceable.

Tonight, Glasgow obliges.

Article: Angela Canavan @ zombiefang_