Adult DVD
Fighting Cocks
Kingston
September 29th 2026
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Big, bouncing, bleepy beats and slyly seductive lyrics make Adult DVD one of the live circuit’s most-compelling acts. Steve Morgan is a slave to the rhythm.
“You can’t beat the old classics,” shouts an audience wag as Dogs In the Sun, the closer on Adult DVD’s 2024 Next Day Shipping EP, comes to a sweaty, pumping crescendo. It’s a throwaway, comic remark, but indicative of how swiftly the Leeds sextet’s scuzzy seductive charms have taken root. Their nonsense rhyming couplets and offbeat observations, delivered over crunchy techno rhythms, make for a powerful tonic on a Kingston Tuesday evening where you can feel autumn’s grip starting to flex.
All the better then for this toothless grin from the gutter, redolent at times of a marriage between a vintage Shaun Ryder, The Prodigy or PWEI at their banging best, or on occasion, some totally unexpected feels. On World’s Best Boss they’re the scabby cousins of fellow Leodensians Kaiser Chiefs one minute; the next, Cold Caller has them dialling up the Stranglers during their grim, wonky Black and White era.
Rarely off the road these past two years, you can really tell: tonight’s set to launch their self-titled debut album is taut, tightly polished no-nonsense stuff from a battle-hardened act high on confidence and, fuelled by the impressive powerhouse drumming of Jonathan Newell, an irresistible proposition live. By their own lights, this is a band less interested in trying to reinvent the wheel, more concerned with spinning tried-and-tested tropes into something of their own, a move that hasn’t hindered the rise of Getdown Services, another act with similarly insidious, darkly comic appeal.
Opening number Coffin Dodger finds frontman Harry Hanson neatly skewering self-obsessed, endless self-curation types – “call me egotistical, I want to see my funeral” – he intones over rising wobbly synths that come on like Kraftwerk, only with a banging hangover: “I don’t want to miss the party of my life. I’m here for the buffet, I’ll stay if it’s nice.”
Doomsday Prepper, another ‘older’ number, offers more of the same. Cowbell, ride cymbal, a stomping beat and bass groove establish a mood expertly lifted by Danny Blackburn’s shards of funk guitar, with Hanson again playfully exploring the world of tinfoil hat merchants lost in the basement – “RVSP, and no plus ones, this is my bunker, it’s at my mum’s.”
And on it goes across 11 songs delivered in a shade under 50 minutes. Not only does no song outstay its welcome – there’s a punk ethic at work here, too – there’s also plenty to look at. Blackburn ducks and dives, plectrum in mouth, switching from guitar to synth; behind and to Hanson’s left on the tiny, cramped stage, synth players Greg Lonsdale and Jake Williams shake and shimmy industriously and crack out the cowbell when required, while bassist George Manson, squeezed into the tightest corner, doubles up on backing vocals that lend a sense of urgency.
Cowboy on Aisle Three, an imagined tale of losing your shit doing the weekly shop, is a shouty delight, as is recent single Real Tree Lee, another eye-rolling expose of the gullible and ill-informed – “Real tree Lee doesn’t talk to the neighbours, he doesn’t cut the grass or do any favours.”
Hanson’s sharp lyrical skill is neatly offset by his languid presence, a dispassionate narrator surveying the landscape. Perhaps this is best summed up in the closing number, the crowd-pleasing Bill Murray (more cowbell), where he takes a crafty swig from his can, rests his arm on the mic stand and stares vacantly out into the crowd.
Adult DVD feel very much like a band for our times, digging in the dirt and inviting us to get down and dirty with them. In the tight confines of the Fighting Cocks – not least as the mosh took hold during the glorious wild thump of Rolling Face and the huge boxy beat of penultimate number Do Something – it felt like we’d found brass amid the muck.
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Adult DVD are on tour in the UK until 31 October. They can be found on Bandcamp, Facebook and Instagram
All words by Steve Morgan. Steve is on Instagram and Bluesky Social
Photos by Robyn Skinner – see her work here: Instagram
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