Final Damnation, The Damned Turn 50 at Brooklyn Steel

Frost Street is a strip of warehouses in East Williamsburg. On Thursday night, one of them hosts a goodbye that has been fifty years in the making.

The Damned play Brooklyn Steel on Thursday, October 22, according to the Bowery Presents listing for the show. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the music starts at 7. The Flamin' Groovies and the Courettes are on the bill, and the show is 16 and over.

The night is a stop on Final Damnation 50, the band's anniversary tour. The name is not subtle, and the band has not tried to soften it.

Fifty Years of Firsts

The Damned formed in London in 1976. The band's own biography on the Bowery Presents listing makes the case for its place in history in a list of firsts. It says the Damned were the first punk band to put out a single, in November 1976, the first to release an album and the first to release a second one six months later.

The list keeps going. The same biography says they were the first punk band to tour America and the first to split up, all before the autumn of 1977. Then they were the first to reform. They came back in 1979 with a third album, *Machine Gun Etiquette*.

That single was "New Rose." In the band's announcement of the American dates, reproduced by Music Fiends, they remember it with something close to tenderness. "It seems like only yesterday we were knocking out New Rose in a dingy converted garage in Islington," they wrote.

The decades after took them through goth, psychedelia and a run at pop stardom in the late 1980s. Their latest album, *Darkadelic*, leans on old black-and-white horror soundtracks, garage rock and even a little jazz, per the same biography.

The Last Big Run

The band has been plain about why this tour is called what it is. In the same Instagram post quoted by Music Fiends, they wrote that "bearing in mind the advanced years of the participants it's fairly unlikely we'll undertake anything quite like this again."

"It's fairly unlikely we'll undertake anything quite like this again." The Damned, via Music Fiends

They also promised a setlist drawn from across their whole career, and said the old songs have to carry "the genuine passion and raunch of the original recordings." Otherwise, they wrote, it just isn't worth doing.

Captain Sensible made the same promise in his own words. "With 50 years of catalogue to choose from, only the best songs from our chequered history will be performed," he told Gold Radio. Rat Scabies was drier about the milestone. "Half a century on and who'd have thought we would still be upright and breathing?" he said.

Who Is on the Stage

Three founders remain. Gold Radio lists the touring band as Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies, with Paul Gray and Monty Oxymoron. Music Fiends names the same core and describes Gray as a member from the early 1980s. Brian James, the founding guitarist, died in 2025, Gold Radio notes.

The tour began at home. Gold Radio called the band's April show at Wembley Arena a comeback, and a run of English dates follows this winter, from Brighton on November 25 to Birmingham on December 5. The American leg includes a stop at the Darker Waves festival in California alongside Smashing Pumpkins, Morrissey and Bad Religion, Music Fiends reported.

The Flamin' Groovies make sense as company. They are another band from the same era that never stopped liking short, loud songs. The Courettes complete the bill.

What to Know Before You Go

Brooklyn Steel is at 319 Frost Street. Doors are at 6 p.m. and the show starts at 7, which is early for a punk night, so do not dawdle over dinner. The venue's ticketing goes through AXS, and the listing showed tickets on sale when we checked. A Preferred Terrace option adds the second-floor balcony and its lounge.

The Damned head to Union Transfer in Philadelphia two nights later, according to Bowery Presents, so Thursday is the New York chance.

It is a crowded night for old records. The same evening, Animal Collective plays its second night of *Feels* in Maspeth, as we wrote in our preview of the Knockdown Center shows.

Fifty years ago they were the first to do almost everything. On Frost Street, they would like to be the last word.