Gig review: Balaam and the Angel at Fiery Bird, Woking

Live review: Balaam and the Angel at Fiery Bird, Woking, Saturday May 9 2026

HAVE you ever gone to see a band just because of its name?

Of course you did, back in the days before streaming, when a concert ticket might have cost a big less than a record and doing this was a sensible way to see if you liked an act. But it’s not really sensible these days when you can just punch a couple of things on your phone (we’ve stopped saying ‘mobile phone’, haven’t we?) to check out just about any band in the world.

Nevertheless, I remember Balaam and the Angel from reading Kerrang! as a teenager and now I live in the London suburb of Balham. And that’s the only reason I’m making my way to Woking tonight – a combination of an address and a memory.

Turns out I am technically outside London and therefore should have bought a ticket rather than relying on contactless. The kindly train station attendant lets me off with a warning.

Using Google Maps to find Fiery Bird, I can see in the distance Woking Pizza Express – famous as Prince Andrew’s alibi when he was accused of committing some atrocity or another. Fiery Bird seems to be a co-operative of some sort, staffed by volunteers on the ground floor of an office block.

I’m not going to pretended I’d never heard Balaam and the Angel, a band formed by the Morris brothers Mark, Jim and Des after their family moved from Scotland to Cannock in the English Midlands when they were kids. Yes, I went to Spotify recently and I didn’t really like Balaam and the Angel – too jangly and alternative, like early Cult but not quite as engaging.

Nevertheless, here I am in Woking with a lukewarm Madri in one hand in a room full of other middle aged men. The support band, Clayton Troupe, confirm my fears – this is definitely not hard rock. The only thing missing are flowery shirts and a hanky hanging out their collective pockets – or a collective hanky in their individual pockets or something like that.

Then tonight’s headliners take the stage – and it’s a revelation.

Guitarist Jim Morris is a proper guitar hero and the the band’s sound live is ineffably tougher than it is on record. These mostly 40-year-old songs sell themselves resoundingly to a lad who lived on the other side of the world and read about them in three-month-old imported magazines.

Another thing we didn’t have in the eighties was setlist.fm. I’m not sure which of these songs actually gave me goosebumps, it was mid-set around “Wake Away”, “Slow Down” or “The Wave”, but it was sublime. Balaam and the Angel – who broke up for only two years between 1989 and 1991 – are definitely a hard rock band.

By the time they punch out their biggest hit, “She Knows”, I’m grinning like a loon.

The people down the front know every word but go back a couple of metres and the crowd is thinning – perhaps a metaphor for bands of this type and vintage who enjoy fanatical support from a comparatively small group of people. A group I have just joined…

I meet a guy in the Gents who’s following them around and is heading down the south coast tomorrow. Back at the train station, the barriers are flung open as the Saturday drunks stumble about but as promised, I purchase a ticket back to Balham.

From Balham to Balaam and back again – it was worth the wait.