In case you were wondering about the plethora of GAA, Ireland and Celtic shirts in town this Tuesday night, it’s because the mighty Irish rap group Kneecap are in town at Tramshed. It’s been a busy few months for the Belfast trio: a film, multiple festivals, and a sold-out US tour from which they’ve only just returned. Now, they’re back in Wales and oof – they deliver.
As 3CAG – from Kneecap’s debut album Fine Art – plays, DJ Próvaí appears, holding Owain Glyndŵr’s flag in the air. Placing it carefully on his decks setup, he’s followed onstage by Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap for It’s Been Ages.
The likes of Fenian Cunts (with an added call and response at the end) and the Grian Chatten feature Better Way To Live go down a storm but it’s when the trio launch into Sick In The Head (a “history making track” according to Móglaí Bap) that things really begin to kick up a notch this evening. What follows is a run of Your Sniffer Dogs Are Shite, Guilty Conscience and I bhFiacha Linne – during which the band call for “the world’s first ever balcony moshpit” and for a Celtic Republic comprised of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. (“The only way the Brits are allowed in our house party is if they have coke,” Mo Chara adds.)
Speaking about rapping in their native language, Mo Chara tells the crowd before a truly wild I’m Flush, “we’re rapping in a language that barely anyone speaks at home. As the Welsh know, it’s a miracle this language survived after 800 years of colonialism … you can’t stop the people speaking the fucking language!”
Tonight is a show for the ages, an absolute belter. Finishing with Get Your Brits Out (before which DJ Próvaí changes his signature Irish tricolour balaclava for a Palestinian flag balaclava – the band have lead chants of “free Palestine” throughout the evening) and an absolutely massive H.O.O.D, the energy in the room is unlike anything seen in Tramshed before this night. A storm is here, and that storm is Kneecap.
Kneecap, Tramshed, Cardiff, Tue 1 Oct
words JOSHUA WILLIAMS photos CHLOE JACKSON-NOTT
