Back in 2021, I saw London duo Nova Twins perform at the (now defunct) Printworks, supporting Sleaford Mods on their Spare Ribs tour. Their unique and vivid blend of electro-metal, punk, and grime had garnered a small but loyal fanbase, while their debut album Who Are The Girls received quiet acclaim. Their performance that night was fun and rampageous, the crowd larger and livelier than many support acts tend to get. Four years, two albums, and one Mercury-Prize later, it is clear that the Twins’ live offering has only gotten louder, wilder, and more dynamic than ever before.
The stage is a visual feast: on either side, supersized flowers bloom over two huge stacks of butterfly-adorned Marshall amps, flanking the band like alien flora in a futuristic sound garden. The Twins take one side each, their mics customed with some on-theme flora and fauna, as a session drummer – the fierce Jake Woodward – sits between them. He is a talent; tight and controlled, yet thunderous throughout the performance.
With riotous opener ‘Black Roses’ (the last song on new album Parasites and Butterflies), the Twins instantly send the room into a frenzy. Despite a technical hitch with her guitar, singer Amy Love keeps singing offstage as she switches instrument, and arrives back to a crowd already in full moshing mode. Her vocal chops astonish as she lets out a guttural, piercing but seemingly perfectly modulated cry-slash-scream to close the song to rapturous applause.
The energy is maintained through next three songs ‘Sandman’, ‘Cleopatra’, and ‘Taxi’, where the duo’s talent comes into clear focus. Though there are only three instruments on stage at one time – bass, drums and, occasionally, guitar – the sound is massive. In large part, this is due to bassist Georgia South, who manages to produce an impossibly complete sound on her instrument that fills and shakes the room with every song. And though it looks like she’s holding a bass guitar, it certainly never sounds like one. At times, she plays it like a theremin, manipulating a device on her finger to produce noise from another dimension. During mid-sit stormer ‘K.M.B.’, her bass goes between buzzing, rumbling lows to screaming highs, distorting the very definition of the instrument. I spent most of the set standing in awe, thinking to myself: “How does she do that?’.
The setlist is relentless and singularly focused, which, though consistently exhilarating, comes at the expense of variety. There is one exception to this, pre-encore metal ballad ‘Hummingbird’, which proves the Twins have more than one trick up their sleeve. It is a powerful end to the main set, and there was potentially more room for its kind amongst the unapologetically intense main portion of the performance.
And yet, it is hard to argue with the results. As the band crash into their encore with ‘Antagonist’, and more timid audience members go for their ‘hell of it’ moment in the mosh-pit, the energy is completely feverish. The Twins’ eccentricity and commitment to their craft promotes an inclusiveness in the room. Whether through having support acts Ashaine White and Hot Wax on stage for bombastic rager ‘Choose Your Fighter’, a LOVE OVER HATE banner hanging from the balcony, or just seeing some old-timers letting loose, the atmosphere is distinctly free and rebellious. And, aside from that, it is always a joy to see such eccentric, independent, and genre-defying music garner the popularity it deserves.
Conor Lang