The Library, 8th October 2026

In the week that Glastonbury once again sold out in half an hour at £400 a pop, allowing lucky ticketholders the chance to see their favourite bands from the far side of a field through a sea of flags and influencers, Divine Schism host a sold-out show in Oxford’s most up-close-and-personal venue, and it’s just as warm as any sun-drenched Somerset field.

 Hardy local perennials SINEWS’ mix of raw-throated post-hardcore and occasionally more intricate, math-rock-tinged exploration finds plenty of room for melody amid the noise, hitting a peak with the frenetic, serrated ‘Dust’ and the sullenly bulldozing set closer ‘I Disappear’.

 London’s FUZZY HEART are looser limbed and more freewheeling but similarly abrasive at times, their scuzzed-up, grunge-adjacent power-pop finding an often exhilarating meeting point between Husker Du and The Hold Steady. They can do the pretty, spangly stuff too when duty calls, notably on an ode to the joys of small venues, but they leave us with what they’re best at – giving it full welly, their set barrelling to a close with energy to spare.

 MEANS OF PRODUCTION might seem an odd inclusion on a guitar-heavy bill but in their own less-than-sweet way, they’re heavier than what’s come before as squelchy synth pulses and austere machine beats underpin Tim Day’s minimalist vocal incantations, either dispassionate observations on medical mundanities or, as on ‘A Better Tomorrow’, a solemn, sterile warning from the future. Sometimes they’re a cyberpunk socialist disco, a stark manifesto seemingly set to Bam Bam’s acid house classic ‘Where’s Your Child?’ but they’re never less than hypnotically brilliant. Louder than war? Maybe not, but far funkier than the AI apocalypse.

 New England’s PERENNIAL take the concept of back-to-basics to a whole new level. Their militant cheerleader, route-1 rock makes The Ramones sound like Van Der Graaf Generator. They’re so trashy they make The Trashmen sound like Coldplay. They are garage punk if the garage had just been hit by a ten ton truck. One number is nothing more than a cataclysmic noise breakdown, but elsewhere they drag something akin to melody and a sense of exuberant fun out of minute-long songs that might fall under the banner “deftly orchestrated chaos”. The vocal interplay between guitarist Chad Jewett and organist Chelsey Hahn reminds us a bit of Huggy Bear, while Jewett’s between-song proclamations and exhortations have something of an old school soul revue about them. Maybe imagine Jon Spencer and Kathleen Hannah fronting Nation of Ulysses. It’s half an hour of no-frills, all-thrills punk fun that is tailor-made for this kind of intimate, sweaty setting; the vast grassy fields of Glastonbury might be calling but the grassroots is where the best stuff really happens.

Leo Bulero