Live Review: Prostitute - Moth Club, London 28/04/2026
It’s Prostitute at Moth Club. We came to dance. let’s dance.
Dearborn noise band Prostitute are having a moment in the sun; more refined and more explosive than their two nights at the Windmill which was legendary, with Lttl Mort in tow, the act are explosive in terms of raw noise and sound and getting the crowd engaged, capable of holding nothing back. It’s the latest name to come out of post-punk that you can tell are capable of reaching IDLES and Amyl and the Sniffers level greatness from their swagger and real grit – the intensity of Attempted Martyr is laid bear on stage for all to see and from the moment they come on the pit descends into complete and utter chaos. Crowd surfers; stage divers, you name it – the revelry is a melting pot and the fury of the band is unrivalled.
There are echoes of Swans and Chat Pile in their stage presence and Moe is an incredibly gifted frontman able to tackle the grit of Arab Identity in America and what it means to be Muslim in the states growing up. The Middle Eastern influences are passionate and they harken back to their roots with a sprawling, thematic sound that carries through much of their set: imagine Protomatyr with the brute force of IDLES and you get something like what Prostitute set out to do; kind of similar to Bristol outfit Knives in execution. ‘Judge’ a roof-raiser; “I don’t sleep / I don’t eat” swelters through the room cutting the crowd like a razor-sharp knife. “I cut holes in the plaster / set fire to the streets” – it’s a rallying cry and we ‘re off. Moe has one sentence for the crowd; daring them to dance, and they obey – launching themselves into oblivion from the word go. It might be, for all its chaos that it can unleash – Moth Club’s angriest, rawest show that I’ve seen in a while.
Running through the new album with the explosive, revolutionary inciting rage that punk outfits like Lambrini Girls are also capable of bringing to the table; ‘M. Dada’ is a detonation – an explosive that basically amounts to the lighting of the fuse. The shrieks and drums pound with raw cathartic rage, furious and utterly incredible. This is a band that’s here to tell the world what it was like growing up in the city of the largest Arab-American population in the United States – and the anger at how they’ve been treated in their youth is all laid bare; all concentrated, all distilled into the pure fury of this one song. It’s what best sums up ‘Attempted Martyr’s’ mission statement and distils its themes into one record – that when performed live; ramps up a notch: more refined, but still plenty chaotic. This is controlled chaos: you know what to do, you’re told what to do – yet you can’t help but embrace it. The mosh lasts from the first song to the end; and would you be anywhere else? Could you be anywhere else but right in the thick of it.
‘Body Meat’ and ‘All Hail’ are also set masterpieces deployed from the album throughout and ‘All Hail’ really raises the roof in terms of its anger: “I’m the motherfucker who took down the towers”; Moe screams – crushing the industrial punk with Middle Eastern, African and East Asian music – it’s really hard to compare it to any kind of band out there right now given just how utterly unique they are. There are literary references too – thematic influences from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian is evident; and the whole set ebbs and flows like it’s a real response to the bigoted views that claim Dearborn has Sharia law – a real place for a community where everyone who turns up to a Prostitute show is welcome. In drummer Andrew Kaster’s own words, pulled from a recent Guardian interview, “what the fuck are you talking about?” This is captured live – the love of Dearborn is felt in the essence in their set – it’s a rallying cry of pure rage that asks for reparations from how they’ve been treated by America and been put through things that no kid should have to go through in a modern; first-world country.
The more controlled Prostitute get as a band the more you see of flashes of Maruja in their set; their ability to ramp up the crowd and dictate where they move next. The band dictate the flow and the crowd follows; effortlessly moving in their grove building a tempo to explosive fire. Moe is a frontman with a stage presence that few can rival and this feels like the resistance in full motion; people allowed to let their rage and fury out at the world in the mosh at anyone who will listen. In terms of sheer intensity the songs kick in and it just never comes up for air; not even once: a short but explosive set puts them in the frame of hardcore band territory should they so wish. Watching Prostitute add more songs to their live set and recorded collection will no doubt be a real joy; there are so many different directions that they could go next that tap into the rawer energy of Chat Pile or just continue carving out their own unique path. Their live shows that they are more than just an outburst of rage: they have complexities to them too that hold accountable those whose views are designed to exclude and persecute.
If there’s a band that you cannot miss live at the moment; removed and devoid from the algorithm, Prostitute is that show.
Words by Miles Milton-Jefferies
