UV-soaked, possessed and properly unhinged: a flying trainer, an Irish harp pendant, and the kind of Camden Assembly chaos that turns a weeknight into folklore.
Words by Caitlin Hay | May 16, 2026
A word of advice for the uninitiated: if the PA at Camden Assembly seems to be groaning through a distorted, eerie female-vocal rendition of ‘Danny Boy’ as the lights dim tonight, you haven’t wandered into the wrong gig. That spectral take on an Irish folk standard is just Bleech 9:3 letting you know what kind of evening they have in mind.
They prowl on under a cold wash of blue UV. Pink hair glows radioactive. Their frontman takes the mic with an Irish harp pendant swinging at his throat, and doesn’t bother with a hello. He’s saving it.
The room detonates on opener ‘Jackie’ and stays detonated. The floor of Camden Assembly is moving, properly moving, though not, you eventually decide, in a way that’s actually going to give. Bass clatters through your ribcage like it’s looking for a way out.
Halfway through the set, the shoe incident. Someone’s missing footwear arcs across the pit and narrowly misses the guitarist stage left. He scoops it up, holds it aloft like the FA Cup, and grins through a full-venue “SHOE! SHOE! SHOE!” before lobbing it back. Owner reunited. Stage right, his counterpart sniper-scopes the crowd a few times through the end of his headstock, picking off teenagers one by one. “That’s so fucking cool,” mutters someone next to me. Reader, it really is.
The frontman, meanwhile, is the find of the night. His voice is cleaner than the venue has any right to host, and yet, for most of the first half, the only words he offers the room are a clipped “where’s my pit?” The rest of the time he’s giving full possessed, in the most fun way, with the kind of stage presence that makes you suspect the haunting, mysterious opening is entirely by design. By the back end of the set he’s chatting freely. By then the spell has already done its work.
The crowd skews young, fangirls in proper formation, one girl FaceTiming her mate for an entire song with a Batman filter slapped over her face. At one point between numbers the room starts chanting for someone called Ben. Nobody on press row seems sure who Ben is. Nobody seems to mind. This is the kind of gig where in-jokes form in real time.
Camden Assembly plays its part too, lighting rigs running halfway back through the crowd, dragging the whole room into the show. 50p lime sodas at the bar. A floor that won’t stop moving. By the time Bleech 9:3 leave the stage, the verdict is in. Raw, punky, possessed, and the kind of band that turns a weeknight into folklore.
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