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New Bomb Turks

Aug 03, 2025 By Matthew Berlyant Photography by Matthew Berlyant Web Exclusive

Although Columbus, Ohio’s long-running New Bomb Turks have been a band for thirty-five years now, forming in 1990, they haven’t made a studio album since 2002’s wonderfully-titled The Night Before the Day the Earth Stood Still. That said, they do still sporadically tour, and I used that as an opportunity to see them, something I’d never done beforehand, despite being aware of them since the early ‘90s, when the well-deserved critical buzz around their debut LP !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!! was at a fever pitch. As such, we got a career-spanning, hour-long set with !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!! being the most represented of their seven albums.

The set opener “Id Slips In,” however, was from their second album (and last before Crypt before moving to Epitaph) Information Highway Revisited, and this album along with their subsequent ones were well represented on this evening with “Girl Can Help It,” “Point A to Point Blank” and set closer, an epic version of “Defiled” that at one point even featured singer Eric Davidson going through the audience and then most of the audience sitting down (at his request) before the song climaxed to its end. And though the three-piece band stirs up quite a racket, dominated by guitarist Jim Weber’s screeching Flying V, it’s Davidson who is impossible to take your eyes off of.

A wailing banshee with an ear-piercing scream, incredible hair, great lyrics, a voice stolen from some ‘50s hillbilly drunk on moonshine but updated for the punk era who moves like a particularly erratic wind-up toy, his propensity for lighthearted/good-natured grossness translated into onstage antics including flicking boogers, stuffing cell phones down his pants, and treating the mic the same way Lux Interior of The Cramps used to (i.e., by swallowing it whole). While this sounds like a COVID-era nightmare (scenario lol), it’s thankfully innocent fun now, years after the fact.

Despite all this excitement, though, it was the !!Destroy-Oh-Boy!! material that STILL thrilled the most and got the most applause, particularly the wonderfully-titled (common with this band) “Born Toulouse-Latrec,” “Tail Crush,” and “Let’s Dress Up the Naked Truth.”

Since there was another event scheduled later that night, they unfortunately had to hustle off the stage. Still, they managed to come back out and play their signature cover of Wire’s “Mr. Suit,” a highlight of their debut album and a version so uniquely their own that they might as well have written it. Oi!

Thankfully, New Bomb Turks brought along Seattle’s The Drowns as main support for this tour. Reminding me of working-class glammy rock and roll-inspired UK punk with a vocalist who’s half Colin McFaull (Cock Sparrer) and half Jake Burns (Stiff Little Fingers), they were the perfect warm-up band for what was to come. And good on them for taking an explicitly anti-fascist and anti-racist stand towards the end of their set.

Locals Disket opened the bill with a very melodic set of ‘77 style punk rock that still retained every ounce of the grit removed from so much pop-punk in the last thirty years or so. One song reminded me heavily of The Avengers, another of The Nuns, and by the time you could catch your breath, they were already off stage. I wish I’d caught more of their set, but they are a band to watch.