Deez Nuts @ The Workers Club, Fitzroy, Melbourne 18/10/2018

A mistimed joke, heat defying fashion, manic energy. If there is anything Deez Nuts know how to do, it’s throw a good hardcore show.

In under an hour, the Melbourne locals made show that they would be remembered long after the last bars echoed away into the spring evening.

The band may be still promoting their new album Binge & Purgatory, but that doesn’t stop them flailing through some of their most loved old classics – including Popular Demand, which is singer JJ Peters’ favourite song to play live.

With four support acts, the crowd was well warmed up by the time Deez Nuts stomped across the tiny Fitzroy stage. While final support Dregg took their time to chat in between songs, Peters launched through each one with the typical fury of a Deez Nuts track.

It’s not a proper hardcore show until someone stage dives or starts a mosh pit, and this one was hardcore confirmed within the first few notes of Purgatory. It was always going to happen like that, and nobody was surprised.

With the swagger of someone who knows he’s achieved something good with Deez Nuts, Peters surveyed the crowd as if it was his kingdom – which it ways. So much so that he hardly had to sing at times, they did that for him too. And they loved it.

Finally the call to play more old material must have worn Peters down, or maybe it was his plan all along, but the band rolled out hit after hit. Band of Brothers and Face this on my Own sent the crowd into a frenzy of arms and legs and fringes flying everywhere.

Watching hard and fast music played hard and fast in a sweatbox while the lead singer wears a beanie the whole show, now that’s hardcore. Deez Nuts are hardcore. May deez nights never end.