LIVE FROM THE PIT: Vukovi, Saint Agnes and Flesh Planet
- Lou Viner-Flood
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
A Saturday night in Sheffield with VUKOVI and friends, for the second leg of the MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN Tour - what more could you want? Following on from an outstanding first leg of the tour, the Scottish alternative heavyweights set out across the UK to bring their wildly unique mix of electro rock and nu metal riffs to adoring crowds once again.
Kicking off the evening was shoegaze noisemakers FLESH PLANET who are a four piece band hailing from West Yorkshire. Despite recurrent issues with the mic, DAMIAN HUGHES (vocals, guitar, synthesiser), ANDREY PAVLOVIC (guitar), JEMAL BEAU MALKI (bass), and CONNOR FISHER-ATACK (drums, vocals) delivered an energetic shoegaze-infused grunge rock set to the eager crowd.
Following up next was goth-adjacent rockers SAINT AGNES, a four-piece from London. Straight off the bat, the crowd was loving their sound, and vocalist KITTY A. AUSTEN delivered an intense vocal performance, backed up by guitarist JON JAMES TUFNELL, drummer ANDY HEAD and touring bassist MAXINE CAHILL. Track You Belong to Me gave heavy NINE INCH NAILS vibes, which only added to the energy of the room. The pivotal moment of the show came when AUSTEN stated how hot they were in their suit, which when met with a typically misogynistic heckle of “Take it off!”, she batted it straight back at the guy with a perfectly timed “You take yours off!” retort.
VUKOVI took the stage with an entrance worthy of the main stage at Download; vocalist JANINE SHILSTONE appeared, bottle of champagne in hand, swagger engaged. She doesn’t just command the room, she detonates in the centre of it in a blur of glitter, grit and high energy. A VUKOVI show always promises chaos, charisma and a guaranteed high octane performance and at Foundry, on a rainy Saturday night in Yorkshire, they delivered and then some.
They opened with THIS IS MY LIFE AND MY TRAUMA, then slammed straight into GUNGHO, MISTY ECSTASY and SLO, a run that whipped the room into an early moshpit. SHILSTONE, accompanied by guitarist HAMISH REILLY continued to bring a raw, but delightfully chaotic stage presence, stating early on how “Sheffield’s fucking class”, much to the enjoyment of the crowd.
A heavy set list of tracks from the Fall Better, NULA and MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN albums followed; Violent Minds, C.L.A.U.D.I.A, MERCY KILL, HADES, FALLEN BEYOND, CREEP HEAT, each welcomed with open arms by the crowd. It’s clear that you don’t just watch VUKOVI perform; you get swept into their gravitational pull and you can’t get out, even if you wanted to. Amongst all of the chaos, a man called Dan loses his anime girl t-shirt and just has to make sure JANINE is aware of this ‘emergency’. The enigmatic front woman plays along with this and demands a full scale search of the floor before she takes a seat on the edge of the stage to perform a stripped back version of Colour Me In, taking a well deserved break from what seemed like running laps.
An incredibly curated run of heavier songs followed; LASSO, BLADED, MY GOD HAS GOT A GUN, I EXIST and Run/Hide, which prompted the age old ‘YORKSHIRE’ chant at the close. The performance of the closing track of the night La Di Da, however, made the rest of the set seem like a warm up. SHILSTONE performed the song entirely from a crowd member's shoulders, still holding the bottle of champagne, whilst spinning around, with people also running circles around her. It was utterly, almost violently exceptional, proving that it’s not just Sheffield who were “fucking class” that night.
Watching VUKOVI that night showed just why they have one of the most devoted fanbases across the UK alt‑rock and metal scenes. There’s a strange beauty in the way they weaponise atmosphere; a metallic edge to their live sound, drums that hit like machinery, and vocals that cut through the noise with surgical clarity. Every chorus delivered by SHILSTONE lands like a firework shot into the ceiling, and REILLY’S guitar work slices through the mix with a kind of playful violence. Even in their heaviest moments, there’s a dreamlike quality to their performance, a sense that the whole set is teetering between euphoria and collapse, and the fans are there, ready and waiting.
Words: Lou Viner-Flood
Photos: Conrad Newton
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