Prostitute Review: The Birth of Post-Punk's Latest Iteration

The Windmill, Brixton

The U.S. experimental post-punk/Arab-rock outfit, lately turning heads on their gripping debut, ignited South London on the first of two scintillating sold-out performances.

The entourage appear without ceremony, shifting quickly into place under tonight's muted stage glow. No greeting, no nod, nothing resembling preamble except the opening detonation of 'M. Dada', a track that wastes no time throwing the room into violent communion. Moe, the band’s possessed nucleus, unleashes a wail pitched between ritual and rupture while the crowd heaves in response, pushed and pulled by guitars warped into distorted shrieks and drums pounding with catastrophic intent.

It’s a bleak, unrelenting kind of energy; Daughters by way of Protomartyr, with Idles’ brute-force insistence and a distinctive Arabesque undercurrent that tugs at the edges: dabke-inflected rhythms, serpentine melodic flares, and a sense of something traditional being cracked open and repurposed.

If the opener raises the temperature, 'Judge' delivers unto us a heatstroke. A throwback to punk’s abrasive minimalist roots; Dead Kennedys, This Heat, and the rest of such misanthropes; the repeated refrains (“I don’t sleep I don’t eat”) traverse hypnotically throughout. Prostitute never pause long enough to allow air back into the room; the crowd barely stays upright, clinging to the palpable momentum as much as the music.

'Body Meat' arrives as another blowtorch of noise, Moe’s voice beginning to unnervingly fray at the edges but somehow sounding even more vital for it. He screams violent, diary-stricken fragments (“I’ve been driven out to deserts untraversed…”) with the cracked conviction of someone scraping the barrels of their throat. The guitars churn, the bass shudders, the drums snap like bone.

The set’s late peak comes with 'Joumana Kayrouz', a feral knot of lust, distortion and bruised desire. Pleasure and abrasion collide at full force: the drums thrash, the guitar lines twist like barbed wire, and Moe leans fully into his scathing, sandpapered delivery. The contrast between erotic charge and sonic annihilation only heightens the allure; a destabilising yet delicious grind.

Tonight's concluder, 'All Hail', begins with a ghostly instrumental sample before the band erupt into their final assault. Moe’s repeated howls spirals into something maddened and superfluously self-consuming, each iteration a step further into their chaotic abyss. His last line of the night, “Who’s gonna stop me?”, is thrown like a dare at the crowd before the band vanish as abruptly as they arrived. A harsh playback track slithers into the silence, filling the room with eerie afterburn as the audience attempts to reorientate.

Prostitute’s lightning-in-a-bottle set tonight ultimately ignites controlled demolition: sweaty, combustible, and unrepentant in its refusal to let up. The fusion of Arab rhythms and post-punk extremity feels both intentional and instinctive, sharpening the band’s already enigmatic presence. Not a single word uttered between songs, a choice that only amplifies the mystique, and not a second wasted on anything but pure, unfiltered annihilation.

A blistering introduction for a band hell-bent on acquiring the current spotlight of noise-rock and post-punk. The Windmill has birthed many local legends; tonight it might have hosted another from across the pond.

7.5/10

Prostitute's debut LP, Attempted Martyr, is out now and can be found below.

Photo is courtesy of David Maynard / WikiPortraits, CC BY-SA 4.0 whose work can be found here.