Empire

What you just heard was Never Fight a Man with a Perm by IDLES, one of the many bands to have graced the Empire Music Hall.
The Empire Bar; located in the Queens Quarter of south Belfast on Botanic avenue, it offers everything from comedy to funk and to weekly blues nights every Thursday performed to some of the most diverse crowds you could ever see. However, and like many other places of performances the Empire has been closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, global pandemic aside the Empire has been a beacon and home for new and upcoming punk. Not just in Belfast music scene but those further afield. Such punk bands include Fontaine’s D.C., Squid and Crows to name a few who have played in this now hallowed music hall. One of the bands previously mentioned IDLES played to a sold out crowd in the Music Hall. According to XSNoise’s article “the band had the crowd on the palm of their hands the entire time” something that makes the atmosphere of a punk gig even better than just simply playing your set to a crowd and getting your pay-check. However, their version of punk still rebels but not against the system or the man. IDLES use their brand of punk to question the idea of what it means to be a man and combats toxic masculinity. Something that shouldn’t exist but still does and IDLES songs such as never fight a man with a perm and Danny Denelko are helping to defeat the stigma around being a manly man and letting men know that it’s punk to be your own kind of man.