SPIRITS PAST SPIRITS PRESENT

Re-made and remodelled, and with a critically acclaimed new album that echoes moments from their post-punk past, The Damned head into the future still with plenty to offer and to thrill

- lan Fortnam

The tortuous road to The Damned’s latest album Darkadelic – a career-encapsulating return-to-form that finds the revitalised quintet at the top of their game – begins on the stage of The London Palladium.

It’s October 2019. All Hallows’ Eve is imminent, and the gothically inclined punk veterans’ Hammer House Of Horror-approved Night Of A Thousand Vampires is upping the ante for live rock theatre. Freaks caper, aerialists twirl, jugulars gape, and Damned vocalist Dave Vanian enters a coffin as Dracula before re-emerging post-interval, head freshly shaved, as Nosferatu.

No one is more impressed than the rest of the band, when they finally see the show upon its release on DVD (last October).

“That gig was a revelation to me,” admits perma-bereted guitar maestro Captain Sensible. “I didn’t see any of the visuals until I saw the film. I had no idea all that stuff was going on, I was concentrating on playing my guitar in the bloody dark. I’m so glad I had a decent tone that night, because Jimmy Page was watching. When I spoke to him after, I said: ‘I’m ashamed to have to admit, Jimmy, that I may have stolen a few of your licks over the years.’ He laughed and said: ‘You wouldn’t be the first, Captain.’”

For Damned Disciples of long-standing, the Night Of A Thousand Vampires seemed to mark the culmination of a significant period of stability – within a band historically synonymous with anarchy and chaos. That Vanian and Captain had been comfortably back in harness since ’96 was remarkable enough, but that they’d managed to retain the services of the same drummer (Andrew ‘Pinch’ Pinching) for 20 years appeared to border on the miraculous.