Live music review: HMLTD at the Workman’s Club, Dublin

4/5

It’s hard to work out whether London band, HMLTD, are a joke — or a pithy commentary on the moribund condition of modern rock. Art-popsters with an emphasis firmly on ‘art’, they took the stage for their first Dublin headline performance dressed like a charity shop Duran Duran — frontman, Henry Spychalski, in military hat, and French guitarist, ‘Duke’, sporting matching black-and-red striped hair and dinner jacket.

But the group — forced to drop their original name of Happy Meal Ltd, when the McDonald’s legal department got in touch — are more than poseurs. ‘Stained’ is a nihilistic rant against moral superiority; ‘Is This What You Wanted’ sounded like Aladdin Sane-vintage Bowie fed through an industrial rock filter.