Soft Play’s rebirth from their former moniker, Slaves, wasn’t just a name change—it was a recalibration. Shedding the baggage of controversy, they’ve doubled down on their raw, sardonic energy while pushing their sound into sharper, more caustic territory. Heavy Jelly, their first album under the new name, doesn’t just reaffirm their punk credentials; it amplifies them, proving they’ve lost none of their bite, only refined it into something leaner, meaner, and impossible to ignore.
Tonight the floor is already sticky. Sticky like a regretful Sunday morning pint spill, sticky like the sweat of a thousand bodies that haven’t yet reached the inevitable point of collapse. Sticky like the bass vibrating through ribcages before a single word has been screamed. It’s Brixton. It’s Soft Play. It’s Halloween, and everything feels just a little bit feral.
No hello, no easing in. Just “All Things” like a pint glass to the face, a battering-ram opening that sends the front rows into instant, lurching motion. If Soft Play had any plans to build tension, they set them on fire the moment Isaac Holman clattered his first drum hit. No safety net, no deep breath—it’s full-speed demolition from second one. The riff snarls, the drums pummel, and the crowd becomes a writhing, erratic forcefield of limbs. This isn’t just music. This is being shaken like a pint glass in a pissed-up fist just before it smashes.
Laurie Vincent looks like he’s just been booted out of a pub for dancing on a table, guitar slung low, throwing out jagged, slicing chords like threats. Holman is half behind the kit, half on top of it, already drenched, already shouting like someone’s just nicked his kebab. The whole set feels less like a sequence of songs and more like a bar fight that everyone is enjoying.
“Mirror Muscles” follows without warning, a whiplash of guitars and razor-sharp stabs of bass, their take on the Baby Dave track turned inside-out, shredded, spat back out in a sprint. The crowd barely gets time to figure out where the beat lands before they’re thrown into another headlong gallop. There’s a moment—one, maybe two seconds—where Holman’s voice wavers, a slight grin, a flicker of acknowledgement. The pit eats it up.
The pit is a lawless place tonight. Moshers fold into each other like collapsing scaffolding, fists up, elbows sharp, pure exhilaration in the push-and-pull. A communal punishment. One lad surfs the crowd and disappears entirely. Will he return? Does it matter? Someone’s lost a shoe. It might not even be theirs.
Vincent launches straight into “Sockets”—no break, no water, no mercy. A fistfight of a song, full of scratchy guitar and furious acceleration, like a car skidding through a roundabout on two wheels. The drums barely hold it all together, a pulse-racing frenzy that should, by all logic, fall apart but doesn’t. It feels dangerous in the best way. The crowd swallows itself whole.
“Punk’s Dead” hits like a Molotov to the face. The kind of song that makes you want to punch a hole through the ceiling just to see if you can. The riff is primal, a two-finger salute to anyone who ever thought punk lost its teeth. Holman’s vocals are half spit, half scream, the kind of shout that feels like it should leave actual damage. The O2 Academy walls flex under the sheer weight of the thing, the pit goes nuclear, and for a full two and a half minutes there is nothing else in the world. Nothing. Just this. The chaos, the filth, the racket.
There’s no chance of relief, no space to breathe. Soft Play don’t do intermissions. Holman’s drum kit looks like it might not survive the night. Vincent’s guitar strings are hanging on for dear life. Someone just hurled a plastic skeleton onstage. A Halloween offering? The band doesn’t acknowledge it. They don’t need to.
And then—suddenly, like someone yanking a speaker cable—it’s the last song. “The Hunter.” A slow-burn menace, the kind of track that doesn’t just start—it looms. A long inhale before the final, devastating punch. It builds, builds, erupts—a full-body shudder of a song, all tension and cathartic violence. The chorus is a mob chant, a communal exorcism. The venue shakes.
Holman is on the drum kit again, then off it, then back behind it, then nowhere at all. Vincent’s guitar bleeds distortion, a long, ugly drone that hangs in the air like a threat. There’s no attempt at a clean ending—just noise, feedback, a final, guttural yell. And then it’s done.
No encore. No thank you. No goodnight. Just blackout silence, the kind that rings in your ears long after you’ve stumbled back into the cold, shirt damp, throat shredded, still feeling like you got pelted with pint glasses of adrenaline.
Soft Play didn’t just play Brixton. They wrecked it. And we loved every second.
Words & photos – Richard Isaac
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