The Worn Flints were new enough to the Columbus scene that many were discovering them for the first time that night, but you wouldn't have known it from watching them. Kenny Stiegele doesn't ease into a set — he runs at it. Watching him charge toward the front of the stage, hair airborne, mouth open, guitar barely contained, it's hard to square the image with the mild-mannered person he apparently is off stage. That gap between the man and the performer is exactly what makes the Worn Flints worth seeing. Stiegele, drummer Jake Smith, and bassist Steve Trabulsi had only just formed when they took the Basement stage that July — but nothing about their set suggested a band still finding its footing. They commanded the room like they'd earned it.
Royal Blood had come a long way to play a 300-capacity basement. The Brighton duo — Mike Kerr on bass and vocals, Ben Thatcher on drums — were a month out from releasing their debut album in the UK, and the buzz had already crossed the Atlantic. Their live reputation was built on a simple but disorienting premise: two people producing a sound that had no business coming from two people. Kerr's bass runs through a rig designed to fill the sonic space a guitar would normally occupy, producing a sound that is simultaneously bottom-heavy and cutting. In a room that size, that trick doesn't just work — it overwhelms.
They opened with "Out of the Black" and didn't let the room recover. "Come on Over," "Figure It Out," "Blood Hands" — the set moved like a freight train with no interest in the scenery. Thatcher is a physical drummer, all velocity and intention, and on a poorly lit stage dressed entirely in black with a ball cap pulled low, he was more presence than person — something you felt more than saw. Kerr, meanwhile, was impossible to miss. The low-angle shot of him mid-song, neck craned, guitar nearly parallel to the floor, captures something the room felt in real time: this was a performer who understood that presence was part of the instrument.
The night's most significant moment came with "Careless" — its live debut, though no one in the room necessarily knew that. It landed the way new songs do when a band already has the audience: with trust already extended, the crowd gave it room to breathe. They closed the main set with "Better Strangers," the house lights came up, and then Royal Blood came back out anyway. There's a version of that move that feels like theater. This wasn't — it felt more like they had something left and weren't ready to stop.
Royal Blood's Mike Kerr stepping on my face
Shot with Canon 30D
f/3.5 1/60 ISO 800
So much movement in the darkness
Shot with Canon 30D
f/3.5 1/40 ISO 800