Friday the 13th is, of course, the perfect day for The Zipheads to launch their much awaited third album Rock‘n’Roll Renaissance at the Camden Underworld. A lot happened since the release of their second album “Z2 : Rampage”, and the St Albans trio came to show it.
First on were another trio The Dead Shout who feature two legendary musicians that I’ve been seeing live for decades : Darren Edwards on double bass and Gary Voodoo on drums, along with Jack Elfick on guitar and lead vocals. They opened with Gary’s super bass drum heavy, drum intro to Just You Wait. It was cool seeing Gary playing a straight drum kit, rather than his normal double set in The Urban Voodoo Machine, once the guitar and bass came in this turned into a dark song of betrayal, you’ve left again.
Dead Shout @ Underworld, London - 2025.07.13
Drag You Down was super speedy psychobilly action, with Darren still swinging his bass about like he always did from The Klingonz onwards. Jack introduced Love Song as being for La Salle and that he still hates her. This is not as dark as Love Song 666 that Gary plays with The Urban Voodoo Machine but had plenty of bile. Boppin’ And Shakin’ is a classic psychobilly rave up, that needed a proper wrecking pit. Jack then admitted that Jump Your Bones may have copped a familiar riff off of none other than The Stooges, it didn’t matter as they made that riff their own.
Ice Cubes was mainly an instrumental rave-up, with the odd spoken word interjection mainly from Gary. I Me Mine had an almost 50’s soda shop pop feel to it, with Jack getting us to sing along to the rather obvious chorus. Spring Clean was about kicking another partner to the kerb, set against amphetamine streaked guitar and Darren’s super heavy bassline twanging.
Wanted Maniac got good and demented with plenty of yelps from Darren and Gary, with Jack delivering the nutty main lyrics, Dead Man’s Party was a hell of a celebration for someone who was hit by lightning. They closed this impressive set by Going Cold and it was time for them to clean up their act and play sober for once.
The Zipheads @ Underworld, London - 2025.07.13
This being Friday the 13th of course, The Zipheads big entrance and launch into the set opener How Do You Like Me Now? was destined to go wrong, so it was that after about 8 bars of the intro they pulled up, to sort a few technical issues out before Ray Waters told us to ignore what we had already heard, before they tried for a second time, this time Will Bennett’s drums really kicked in and they were off, For this show they re-worked the bands classic Welcome To The Real World into Welcome To The Underworld in tribute to the surroundings in a venue that has been going almost since Renaissance Times as The Mother Red Cap.
Ray then gave us all a big welcome and made clear that this was the album launch show for Rock‘N’Roll Renaissance, the band’s long overdue third album, the title tune sounded great with New Zealand’s own Dick Dynamite’s double bass right in our faces. They were hoping the new album would bring them Happiness along with super speedy Gretsch guitar mania, even if it seemed to cut out a couple of times, needing some tech help in between songs. Hold Tight, they were going to be speeding at about 180bpm with the bass doing so much to drive it on. Funny followed as it does on the album and it has some wonderfully bittersweet lyrics.
One of the things Ray convinced us that Everybody Knows, was that wearing ruffs bought off of a famous Chinese website was not a guarantee of comfort, as his neck appeared to be rather itchy. Ray then told us about the first time the band played at The Underworld to a very empty venue, before telling us a story about how he wrote Manslaughter, because there are hundreds of Murder songs but almost no manslaughter ones, the wry humour runs through the song as Ray’s fingers ran all over the frets on his guitar.
Ray then asked a very 2020’s question : how will earth survive the human race? A question at the core of Last Man On Earth, and an imperious bassline might help save us all! Still we can all leave it behind us on After All, that despite the dark subject matter was loads of fun. Ray then dedicated Incestuous to his and Will’s hometown of St Albans claiming to have slept with almost all of Will’s family among other small town shenanigans.
The Zipheads @ Underworld, London - 2025.07.13
Don’t Pretend is a classic rockabilly love gone wrong rampage of deceit and betrayal. They closed the set by claiming as every great band should, that they are on Top Of The World because they can play packed out shows like this to an adoring crowd.
They more than deserved the encore they came back onto play. Ray explained that they always close The Zipheads albums with a cover version, this time it is the Jackie Wilson classic Lonely Teardrops that they sing a lot faster than he did, Ray then gave in to multiple audience requests and they closed the night with the bands version of Neat Neat Neat, in tribute to The Damned t-shirt Ray was wearing, they amped it up and when the song broke down a bit, they went into a chorus and verse of Papa Was A Rolling Stone with a good funkabilly edge, that mutated back into Neat Neat Neat to bring a great set to close.
Get your hands on Rock’N’Roll Renaissance on the band’s webshop!
The Zipheads @ The Underworld, Camden – 2025.06.13
Live review by Simon Philips
Photography by Pauline Di Silvestro
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