The Damned Deliver A Defiant Final Melbourne Show

The Damned closed their Australian tour at Melbourne’s Forum with a career-spanning set that showed why five decades into their history, the band remains a formidable live act.

by Paul Cashmere

The Damned brought their Final Damnation 50th Anniversary Tour to Melbourne’s Forum for the final night of their Australian run, performing a two-hour set that travelled from their 1976 beginnings through to their 2023 album Darkadelic and their latest material. A near-full house of punks, goths and younger fans witnessed a band whose members have been together for decades, with the performance raising the inevitable question of whether this really will be the group’s final Australian appearance.

At ages ranging from 64-year-old keyboard player Monty Oxymoron to 72-year-old Captain Sensible, retirement might appear to be the logical next chapter. The evidence on stage in Melbourne, however, suggested a band that remains actively engaged with its catalogue and audience.

The Damned have released three albums during the past decade and, apart from the COVID-19 interruption, have continued to tour. Their longevity is also reflected in the current line-up. David Vanian and Rat Scabies have been with The Damned from the beginning, Captain Sensible joined in 1979, Paul Gray in 1980 and Monty Oxymoron in 1996.

That history is evident in the way the musicians operate together. Vanian and Sensible effectively host the performance, Scabies provides its propulsion, Gray anchors the arrangements and Oxymoron supplies the atmospheric dimension that has become central to The Damned’s sound.

The opening sequence immediately established the breadth of the catalogue. “Street Of Dreams”, from 1985’s Phantasmagoria, was followed by “Wake The Dead” from 2023’s Darkadelic, before “The History of the World (Part 1)” returned to 1980’s The Black Album.

From there the set continued to move unpredictably through the band’s history, taking in “Stranger on the Town”, “Alone Again Or”, “Shadow of Love”, “I Just Can’t Be Happy Today”, “Life Goes On” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”.

The theatrical presentation reinforced the musical history. The Damned logo appeared between songs while large-screen visuals shifted between gothic imagery, historic London scenes and footage of the band from earlier eras. The production gave the performance a distinctly cinematic quality without overwhelming the music.

“Eloise”, the Barry Ryan composition recorded by The Damned in 1986, remained a major crowd moment, although the song’s demanding upper register proved challenging for Vanian. The contrast between the original recording and a performance several decades later was a reminder of the physical demands placed on singers who continue to perform songs written for younger voices.

Scabies provided one of the night’s most striking moments with an extended drum solo. At 71, he remains capable of driving an audience with considerable force, eventually using the solo to propel the band into “New Rose”, the 1976 single that established The Damned as one of the defining early British punk acts.

The significance of “New Rose” has extended well beyond its original release. The song gained another generation of listeners through Guns N’ Roses, while “Smash It Up” reached a different audience through The Offspring’s cover for the Batman Forever soundtrack. In Melbourne, “Smash It Up (Part 1)” and “Smash It Up (Part 2)” provided the final, full-throttle release of the evening.

The audience itself was evidence of The Damned’s continuing reach. Alongside long-time followers were younger goths, many dressed in the style associated with the band’s gothic period, who could not have been born when The Damned were already established figures in the British punk scene.

The night also featured Australian punk veterans The New Christs, led by Radio Birdman’s Rob Younger, while Seattle’s The Darts made their Australian debut. The Darts’ line-up of Nicole Laurenne, Rebecca Davidson, Lindsay Scarey and Rikki Watson delivered a forceful opening set. With no official merchandise available, the band improvised, buying Kmart T-shirts and hand-writing their logo, setlist and tour dates on them. Laurenne sold the homemade souvenirs after the performance.

For The Damned, Melbourne represented another chapter in a history that began in London in 1976 with “New Rose”, followed by the landmark debut Damned Damned Damned. The band subsequently moved through punk, garage rock, psychedelia and gothic rock, resisting any single definition of their music.

Whether Final Damnation proves to be an ending remains unanswered. What is clear from the Melbourne performance is that The Damned can still draw a substantial audience across generations and deliver a set that treats five decades of music as a living repertoire rather than a museum piece.

The Damned Melbourne Setlist

Street of Dreams
Wake the Dead
The History of the World (Part 1)
Stranger on the Town
Alone Again Or
Shadow of Love
I Just Can’t Be Happy Today
Life Goes On
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Is It a Dream
Eloise
Nasty
Making Time
Love Song
Machine Gun Etiquette
Ignite
Neat Neat Neat (with Break On Through)

Encore
Curtain Call
Drum Solo
New Rose
White Rabbit
Smash It Up (Part 1)
Smash It Up (Part 2)

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Tagged as: Captain Sensible, David Vanian, Final Damnation, Forum Melbourne, Gothic Rock, New Rose, Punk rock, Rat Scabies, The Damned, The Damned Melbourne