By Jase Walker
I could have swore I was typing up reviews in March just a minute ago, where the hell has 2024 gone?! I feel like I’ve blinked and the whole of summer disappeared, whoops.
Anyway, enough about my constant chronological anxiety, I’m about to watch a fucking badass at Melkweg UP tonight. An intimate show with Delilah Bon following dropping an album full of absolute hell and with a name to match, ‘Evil, Hate Filled Female’, a delightful moniker that Delilah has earned from the more scummy parts of the internet. Delilah Bon is another great example of this emerging scene of women and femme-adjacent artists mixing rap, metal, punk and whatever the fuck they feel like such as Cassyette, Ashnikko, Bambie Thug, Scene Queen, and that is just scratching the surface here.
This will be another somewhat brief write-up as Halflives unfortunately are not on tonight’s date despite being on the rest of the European shows which is a real bummer. I’m also quite envious of the ÜK shows having Tillie for support also as I bloody love their work too. ANYWAY, this just means the entire focus is on Delilah’s show tonight in a real intimate venue so I don’t have much to grumble about.
The room goes dark (as is tradition) and a phone call dialogue plays as a mocking introduction before Delilah takes the stage with an ensemble backing her up which is way fucking louder than I anticipated it being. So other than scaring the actual bejesus out of me, this show certainly ramped up to 110% with breakneck speed. It’s pretty cool that there’s a dedicated backup singer as part of the backing band too, I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever seen that particularly often.
‘Grown Ass Men’ goes hard as it spears the throngs of fragile men that always get bent out of shape when a woman dares to assert herself, you can probably see how the inspiration for the album title came about as a mockery of these kinds of guys.
Delilah is quite clear that she’s not feeling super great right now, which honestly, could have fooled me given that she’s still going full send with this performance. I mean you even have the bass player joining in with the dance choreography as well so there’s always something going on. I’ve remarked on this sort of performance a number of times and the fact that Delilah Bon can sing, dance with choreography, direct the audience, all at once, is actually staggering. At one point the audience opens for the bass player and backing singer to jump into the audience and suddenly… Bubbles? Dollar bills? The sound engineer seemed a bit amused after a bunch of the ‘money’ landed on his desk.
‘Freak Alert’ has a couple of the band fuck off stage and change into police outfits and start shining around a pretty strong torch and ‘taking notes’ about those in the audience, bloody love theatrics like this. Oh, that also includes a giant inflatable (signed) penis, who’d have guessed. ‘Drop Dead Delilah’ now has them in ermm.. Goldilocks tabards(?) handing out lollies.
This show is a ton of fun to watch, not only that but managing to keep a show like this going while you’re feeling ill is no small feat. This is a show that I really can’t see staying on stages of this size for very long, you do a tour like this that oozes quality and proper artistic integrity in support of an album like Delilah just dropped and people are going to talk. Not only is this show heavily charged with rebellious woman energy, it’s also massively in support of the LGBTQ+ community as it’s very dear to Delilah and the crowd present tonight as well. Delilah wears her beliefs proudly on her sleeves and projects them without shame through her art.
It seems like the whole crowd has been waiting for ‘I wish a bitch would’ because the screams at the song introduction were deafening and the subsequent singing for the chorus is almost drowning Delilah herself out! The walk off monologue leaves a departing message that reminds those who were here that hopefully this show has been cathartic, regardless of gender, race, expression. We do still get a brief encore as a proper send off and this has been a fantastic way to spend an evening and despite missing Halflives, I can still say that this has been a fulfilling show that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
I hope the rest of the European jaunt and subsequent ÜK dates are similarly fantastic. Delilah Bon is a force to be reckoned with.
- All content © Über Rock. Not to be reproduced in part or in whole without the express written permission of Über Rock.