They are a good laugh, at Reading '06 they played  two sets in one day. Did they give The Kilburn High Road (Or whatever it's called) an airing? I quite like that one as well...

And if you've ever wondered what their singer was doing many years before... It involves former Motorhead guitarist Eddie Clark, and isn't bad at all!

Flogging Molly, Pepper, Ill Scarlet @ London Astoria, May 31st 2008

We arrived at 7pm, but apparently the gig started ridiculously early, so we missed the first support act Ill Scarlett. After grabbing a couple of cans of Guinness for the ‘bargain’ price of £6.60 we were greeted by Pepper bounding onto the stage. They play speedy ska-punk with slower paced dub bits. Unfortunately the dub sections sound like the bass player is just hitting his strings far too hard – it sounds heavy, but not in a good way. And the ska sections are frantically played, but ultimately dull. Perhaps this band would work better in a festival setting, but even then I doubt I’d enjoy them much. Still, a fair few of the crowd are obviously fans and the reaction isn’t bad at the front of the venue.

After a relatively short wait, the seven members of Flogging Molly appear onstage. Flogging Molly weave in traditional instruments, such as accordion and violin, with your modern bass, drum and guitar combo, creating an Irish-folk influenced brand of punk rock. This isn’t a unique idea, or even a new one as fans of The Pogues may well point out, but they have developed a wide range of fans and are still going strong with the release of their fourth full-length album ‘Float’.

As soon as the band get stuck into their first song, the crowd begins lurching back and forth, demonstrating that despite being upgraded from the smaller Astoria 2, there is still precious little room for manoeuvre. Still, every song gets a euphoric welcome from the legions of fans packed into the sweaty venue. The audience bounce up and down, jigging around when space allows as small circle pits open up and inevitably collapse again. While every song gets a warm reception, tracks from the new album such as ‘The Lightning Storm’ and ‘Requiem for a Dying Song’ seem to get an ever so slightly cooler reaction, perhaps because the crowd are less familiar with them. The title-track ‘Float’ seems to buck this trend with a more mellow sound than the typical Flogging Molly song, meaning it’s perfect for everyone to catch their breath and sing along.

Old favourites like ‘Drunken Lullabies’, ‘Salty Dog’ and ‘Rebels of the Sacred Heart’ get a predictably raucous welcome, while ‘What’s Left of the Flag’, described simply as “a song about freedom” by lead singer and guitarist Dave King, is perhaps their best known song and is the perfect choice to end the set. A very brief interval later, and the band return to the stage for a two-song encore.

Overall the performance was as expected. The band all play well and still seem passionate about what they do, and while some songs can sound a bit too similar to each other, that does nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of their ever growing base of hardcore fans. If you vaguely like Irish-folk and punk then you should give Flogging Molly a listen, and if you enjoy jigging around like a fool then seeing them play live should be right up your street – just cross your fingers that there’s enough space for the jigging!