All it takes is one word. Just one word, comprising three letters and one syllable, repeated twice.
Bryan Garris, frontman of hardcore superstars Knocked Loose, looks out at the sprawling mass of bodies in front of him at London’s Kentish Town Forum, puts his mic to his lips, and detonates the bomb. “Arf! Arf!” he barks.
The rest is chaos.
Two and a half thousand people, from the floor to the balcony, are screaming and throwing their legs and fists around with abandon, slamming into each other as if it’s the last thing they’ll ever do.
It might be mayhem, but it’s calculated mayhem, as Bryan explained earlier in the band’s dressing room.
“I feel like every decision that we make when it comes to writing is based off the live show,” he said. “We have a setlist that is completely built around crowd participation, and where in our songs we can create moments in a live setting.”
It’s an approach that’s working for them. That “Arf! Arf!” mosh call comes from the song from Knocked Loose’s debut album, Upon release in 2016, it went viral. Neither an Architects-style bleh, nor a Machine Head-style roar, it was a full-on, never-heardbefore dog bark. Not only did it inspire a slew of YouTube reaction videos
