Review: CLAMM at Buffalo Club
CLAMM with Skortz and False Cobra at Buffalo Club
Sunday, September 7, 2025
CLAMM’s first trip west and the second of two Perth shows landed in Fremantle at just the right moment. Still smarting from the Dockers’ one-point elimination final loss the night before, noise, rage, and release were needed, and CLAMM—with serious local back-up—delivered. A late shuffle to the support lineup brought in Skortz and False Cobra. No complaints here: one discovery, one reminder, and then CLAMM’s heavyweight noise.
Skortz, a freshly formed Freo duo, could be your next favourite girl punx. Donning Ben Lawver for Freo Mayor tanks, they opened with bratty immediacy: “I Don’t Want You, I Don’t Like You, I Don’t Care.” Their sound pinballed between sweet ’50s girl-group tones and Aussie snarls ’n’ expletives—playful, caustic and impossible to ignore. Remuneration spun into a tongue-twisting list of –ations—exploitation, liberation, remuneration—rattled off until the word collapsed under its own weight. The band leant into the joke, asking the crowd if anyone could pronounce it better.
Like their hybrid moniker, Skortz clash ladylike and pub-grime cravings. Please shifted from Chrissy Amphlett sultriness to a desperate scream, while Figure It Out doubled as a love letter to Freo with shoutouts to Dolly, CDs, and hanging out in the West End by way of Puberty Blues. Their ode to netball, Wing Attack, sealed the deal—my inner 10-year-old pinging at the cries of “Contact!” and a piercing umpire’s whistle. Somewhere between Amyl and the Sniffers and Divinyls, Skortz channel vintage Aussie rock but swap grind for cheek, melody and charm.
If Skortz served fresh brat-punk, False Cobra countered with pub-rock grit. Leaning into their “beer drinking music” vibe, they balanced cynicism with the tongue-in-cheek, teetering between overwrought machismo and self-awareness. Not many escaped their barbs: when their lyricism wasn’t blurred by guitar-driven urgency, they skewered their targets.
Their set leant on last year’s recording. Black Out ripped through haze and hangover, Ghost Bat blurred with rampant guitar, and Gosnells Blues stomped on its repeated refusal: False Cobra are not going back. Less about lyrical clarity than propulsion, the band moved in such mutual gyrations it was a wonder no one tripped over a lead. Their humour carried through in Rio, flipping Peter Allen into “When my baby smiles at me I go to Rio… Tinto,” and in the closing one-two punch of Great Northern Hwy and Canning Highway—road songs stitched with land rights critiques and nods to WA rock mythology. It was loud, blistering, and familiarly West Australian.
Then CLAMM. The Melbourne three-piece are touring their latest release, Serious Acts, a suite of noise-punk tracks grappling with how to keep your head straight—to live honourably, even—amidst the lure of nihilism and the endless fuckedness of life in the Colony.
They opened with the title track, ear-splitting feedback scraping the ceiling before settling into a hypnotic bass-drum churn. Jack Summers’ staccato delivery was almost mechanical, pitch-matched to his guitar, laconic and bristling at once. Early trepidation—fiddling with pedals, tweaking tones—soon broke down into raucous thrash, any overthinking drowned in sheer propulsion.
Change Enough followed as a desperate plea to do better, volatile emotion raw with legitimacy. A reminder that not everything has to be shrugged off with a laugh—sometimes you just need to get fucking angry. Stella Rennex’s bassline stood firm and functional, the perfect foil to the macho contortions earlier in the night. Even when a pedal broke, the band joked it off, weaving Fremantle’s footy loss into the gag so everyone could move forward together.
By Problem Is the sound was bolstered, relentless; Summers upright, spine straight, voice cutting through. Keystone Pols hurled itself at hapless cops and abuse of authority, Summers yelling into the void with a throat as raw as the track itself.
Define Free, one of three tracks aired from their Disembodiment EP, loosened both sound and posture, stretching taut precision against swampier tones. Its interrogation of illusory freedoms—the honesty about bending values to survive—gave space to the band’s most earnest side. Another set and album highlight, Bag I’m In, arrived as a bleary, disappointed self-examination, its hollered chorus echoing resolutely.
The latter end of the set blurred in clarity, CLAMM’s noise threatening to collapse under the weight of social discord and futile conviction, yet never losing steam. Summers paused to thank the venue and shout out The Buff, declaring there was nothing like it in Naarm. That recognition of space mattered: CLAMM’s music is bound to its context, and here it felt like they were standing inside exactly the kind of room they fight to defend.
They closed with And I Try—the opening track of Serious Acts but here the closer—pulsating, throbbing, industrial, the most punishing piece of the set. Noise as resilience and defiance. We walked out bleary-eyed into the Freo twilight, ears buzzing, bruised, but lighter somehow. CLAMM’s first trip west had delivered exactly what was needed.
CAT LANDRO
Photos by Adrian Thomson
