The Damned - Colchester Castle 21st August 2026

The Damned — Castle Park, Colchester

21 August 2026

Review by Robert Corich

There is something faintly ridiculous about trying to write a review of The Damned in 2026.

This is, after all, a band that has spent the best part of fifty years refusing to behave sensibly. They arrived with New Rose when punk was still regarded as a social disease, wandered off into goth, psychedelia, pop, garage rock and theatrical excess, survived personnel changes, fashion changes and the death of several musical movements — and here they are, playing Castle Park in Colchester as if the whole business was only just getting started.

The opening of “Street of Dreams” immediately sets the tone. Not the sound of a bunch of old punks dutifully revisiting their past, but something much more grandiose. The Damned have never been particularly interested in standing still, and this is music that still seems to be looking for the next corner to turn.

“Wait for the Blackout” and “Love Song” follow, and suddenly the years between then and now seem considerably less important. There are bands whose old songs sound like historical documents. The Damned’s songs sound like they have simply been waiting for someone to switch the electricity back on.

Then comes “The History of the World (Part 1)”, which is exactly the sort of wonderfully overblown title that only The Damned could deliver without irony completely swallowing the music. “Stranger on the Town” and “Is It a Dream” continue the journey into the band’s darker, more atmospheric territory.

And this is where The Damned’s longevity becomes particularly interesting.

They aren’t surviving because they have preserved some mythical version of 1977 in aspic. Quite the opposite. Their appeal has always been their refusal to remain purely punk. They were too musically curious for that. The guitars could be savage, but they could also be beautiful. The lyrics could be sinister, romantic, ridiculous or all three within the same verse.

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” arrives with precisely the sort of theatrical darkness you’d expect, before “Eloise” changes the temperature completely.

A Barry Ryan cover!

On paper, it sounds like an absurd choice for one of the founding bands of British punk.

In reality, it makes perfect sense.

The Damned have always possessed a slightly perverse relationship with pop music. They don’t simply attack the establishment; occasionally they nick its best tunes, put them through the gothic wringer and hand them back looking slightly traumatised. Eloise is magnificent precisely because it shouldn’t work.

Then “Ignite” kicks the door open again.

And after all the theatrics, all the history and all the musical wandering, there is the moment everyone knows is coming.

“Neat Neat Neat.”

There are certain songs that don’t need introduction. The opening notes are enough. Somewhere in the collective memory, 1977 suddenly becomes yesterday.

And then comes “New Rose.”

What can you say about New Rose that hasn’t already been said a thousand times?

You can talk about its place in British punk. You can talk about how ridiculously early it arrived. You can talk about the influence it had. You can talk about the fact that The Damned beat practically everyone else to the starting line. I can even mention it’s the first punk record I ever brought and that my friends thought I was mad to even enjoy it let alone dare to play it!

Or you can simply listen to it.

Because despite everything that has happened since, it still sounds bloody fantastic.

That is the important thing.

Not nostalgia. Not heritage. Not some solemn museum-piece celebration of punk’s golden age.

Energy.

The final pairing of “Smash It Up (Part 1)” and “Smash It Up (Part 2)” is therefore almost inevitable. If The Damned’s career has taught us anything, it is that categories are there to be smashed, conventions are there to be ignored and musical boundaries are largely suggestions.

So they smash it up.

Of course they do.

And perhaps that is why The Damned still matter.

There are plenty of bands from the original punk explosion who can now be appreciated historically. Their importance is unquestionable. Their records changed things. Their photographs changed things. Their very existence changed things.

But The Damned have always been slightly different.

They never seemed particularly interested in becoming history.

They still don’t.

Standing in Castle Park in 2026, watching a set that moves from “Street of Dreams” through “Love Song,” “Eloise,” “Neat Neat Neat” and finally Smash It Up, the most remarkable thing isn’t that The Damned are still here.

It’s that they still sound like they haven’t quite decided what they’re going to be when they grow up.

Long may that remain the case.

Because some bands grow old.

Some bands become legends.

The Damned?

They just keep smashing the place up.