Squeezed into a venue that felt too small and too dark to contain the impending chaos, a restless crowd filled every inch of floor space long before showtime. They gathered for the familiar authority of local icons Skeleton Goode, but also for a long-awaited reunion: the return of the Chinese outfit Oh! Dirty Fingers to Vietnam after more than a year. The atmosphere was gritty with minimal lights, tight quarters, yet it formed the perfect backdrop for the night’s promise, a raw and high-quality explosion of energy where everyone, from the bands to the fans, was ready to burn it all down.
SKELETON GOODE DELIVERS A MASTERCLASS IN ENERGETIC PSYCH-SURF
True to their status as local heavyweights, Skeleton Goode delivered a sonic masterclass that felt less like a warm-up and more like a headline performance. Their sound was a dense, multi-layered tapestry, enriched by the swirling hum of the organ and the gritty, frenzied blasts of a saxophone. Cutting through this instrumental density was the vocalist’s reverb-soaked croon, a commanding, echoing presence that seemed to haunt the venue’s dark corners.
Spanning a full hour, the set was a marathon of stamina and precision. Far from losing steam, the band only grew more ferocious as the night deepened. By the final stretch, the music had evolved into a hypnotic force, with infectious melodies and driving surf-rock rhythms that cast a spell over the room. The floor transformed into a sea of moving bodies as the audience danced, effectively obliterating any dread of the looming Monday morning. For sixty minutes, the outside world didn’t exist; only the sweat, the groove, and the joy of the moment mattered.
OH! DIRTY FINGERS TEARS THE PLACE APART WITH HIGH-SPEED PUNK PROFICIENCY
If anyone expected a rusty return, they were dead wrong. Oh! Dirty Fingers came back louder, heavier, and with a terrifying level of technical precision that caught everyone off guard. The frontman was the chaotic center of this storm, clutching a cocktail with the swagger of a drunken bard. His vocal performance was a schizophrenic masterpiece, oscillating instantly from guttural, animalistic screams to prolonged, romantic croons that hung strangely in the air.
Backing this theatrical madness was a rhythm section of pure violence; the drummer roared, screaming along viscerally with every thunderous beat. The signature guitar tone wailed as if singing in harmony with the non-stop moshing that was tearing the floor apart. The night reached its absolute breaking point with the finale: a blistering, chaotic cover of the classic “Journey to the West” theme. At that moment, the venue felt ready to detonate, dissolving into pure noise and anarchy. When the feedback finally faded, the room erupted in desperate chants of “One more song!”, but the band didn’t budge. True to their punk ethos, they refused to indulge the crowd. As they had proclaimed, they are not posers. They came, they conquered, and they left us in ruin.
When the ugly house lights finally clicked on, the place looked like a total dump. The floor was a nasty mess of crushed cups and stale beer, sticky enough to trap your boots. People were all absolutely wrecked, dripping sweat, bruised, and gasping for air, but hell, nobody wanted to go home. We were dead on our feet yet still craving another hit of that noise. Skeleton Goode and Oh! Dirty Fingers trashed the place with sound, leaving us standing in the middle of the wreckage.
