“No chance that’ll happen…I’ll get a ticket just incase” were the first words from a friend when the unexpected reunion of yourcodenameis:milo was announced back in 2020. The reformation was announced during the early days of the 2020 pandemic when venues like The Cluny, arguably the most important location in the band’s history, were at real risk of having to close, before any help from the government or elsewhere was available. It’s been almost three years since the announcement with quite a few dates rescheduled (mostly due to the ongoing situation) and the proceeds are now going to the Bobby Robson Foundation who fund cancer research, diagnosis and treatment.

Before they perform it’s a warm up from Kkett, a band who are completely new to me. They have a real interesting setup, with drums, guitar and two bass players. They’re a really unique and interesting band, the music often heavy while the vocals are often quite high and frequently harmoning with each other. They label themselves Joycore and, well, I’m not sure you could describe them any better than that. There’s a sort of Dananananaykroyd feel to their songs, just with heavier riffs and breakdowns. Definitely a band to keep an eye on, there really isn’t much music out there like this at the moment. Excellent.

After quite a lengthy changeover it’s time to welcome yourcodenameis:milo back, straight into a Rapt. Dept. It’s been so long that I forgot just how hard that triple guitar assault hits live – each individual part is fairly minimal on this track but together it creates something quite epic. While the band have been on hiatus it’s not as though their members haven’t been active elsewhere and it seems in that time they’ve perfected their individual sounds. The set tonight is really spread across their whole discography, including some real deep cuts like I.Shoes and The Dead French from the Schteeve single. By the time the band get to Empty Feat the band seem to be in their stride, like they never went away. The atmospheric feel from these tracks is all there and sounds as epic as it ever did, the complex drumming sounds so tight you’d think they were in the middle of a long tour rather than it being their first show in fifteen years.

Part way through the set they introduce their original drummer Bez to join them for a couple of tracks from All Roads To Fault, The Problem and First Mater Responds – a real unexpected bonus for most of the audience and it’s great that he was able to join in the reunion. Later in the set we were treated to the rather epic sounding Schteeve, a track initially driven by a gnarly distorted bass drive, building up to a clean picked guitar part in the middle. It’s quickly followed by All Roads To Fault, the track which really introduced me and a lot of other people to the band back when MTV2 was regular after school/college TV, it’s angular, odd timed, guitar parts colliding with Paul Mullen’s unique vocals. It’s a real joy to hear it live once again.

The set ends with Screaming Ground, a huge, energetic climax to an incredible set. Fifteen years and the whole set sounds perfect. I know they’ve since announced a show at ArcTanGent but I really hope they don’t then disappear back into the hiatus abyss – they still, even so many years later, stand out with a really unique sound. If this is the start of a comeback then they couldn’t really have returned any stronger than this.