Gig Review: Gama Bomb / Raised By Owls – Audio, Glasgow (21st April 2025)

Sometimes you just need to let loose and have a little fun. Music can be a serious business, but thankfully there are some people around who are here to help you have a giggle while you rock out. Tonight’s show featured two of them.

Openers Raised By Owls are no strangers to these pages, and their set (at least Sam’s mum’s part in it) was a highlight of Bloodstock 2024. You always wonder what they can do to fill a set, and it’s always wonderfully stupid. As Sam said at one point during the set, this is what you get when you ask a grindcore band to open. All their songs are short and silly so they have to plug the holes with something.

As a result, surrounding their ten-ish song set was a RBO-themed game show. Along with fan favourites such as “Strictly Come Danzig”, “Ainsley Harriott Advises You to Give Your Meat a Good Ol’ Rub” and “I’m Sorry I Wore a Dying Fetus T-Shirt to Your Baby’s Gender Reveal Party” we had some party games with amazing (OK, very dodgy) prizes. Why do a song called “Dance Like Barney Greenway” when you can get the fans to do exactly that and throw a t-shirt at the best? A t-shirt they absolutely cannot wear in public. Ever.

Silly costumes, silly songs, silly people and a set that included the first stagedivers I’ve seen at a Glasgow venue since Kvelertak in 2013 this was one of the most enjoyable 40 minutes or so I’ve had at a live venue in ages.

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In honesty Gama Bomb were going to find this a hard act to follow, but there was no denying that the audience were up for an hour’s thrashing with a pit that went wild from the moment they launched into “Slam Anthem”. Frontman Philly Byrne was wandering round the crowd within minutes, ensuring that everyone was having a good time and there was no need for that “everyone move further forward” pleading that is often the case at smaller shows.

The divers continued to dive, some finding themselves on stage as a song was finishing. Credit to the band, they threw in some extra random riffs so that nobody danced in embarrassed silence!

They absolutely ploughed through a packed set with around twenty songs crammed into it, and a charity auction for Doctors Without Borders chucked in the middle. Huge props to the person who paid £120 for a signed drumskin, as well as the others near the front who quite literally threw cash at the band to go into the charity pot. This may have been a night of fun and frolics, and it says a whole lot for the band and the audience that they were able to do some good alongside it all.

Both band and audience were hot, sweaty and smiling by the end of the show. The pit was so frenetic that one lady suffered the indignity of the sole of her shoe coming off! Two surprises followed: firstly that she had a tube of glue in her bag to fix it, and secondly that I bumped into her at the next show I was reviewing: Employed To Serve at the Cathouse two days later.

It’s not uncommon to to leave a show with a smile on my face. It’s more unusual to leave with ribs sore not just from the pit, but from laughing so hard. Thanks to both of them for some much needed comedic and musical relief!