Dublin experimental rock band My Bloody Valentine played their first show in five years this week, kicking off their UK headline tour with a gig at Birmingham 02 Institute. Their last shows came in the form of a worldwide tour, following the release of their acclaimed 2013 album “m b v”.

Though the band hadn’t played together in a considerable amount of time, frontman Kevin Shield’s latest live appearance was much more recent. He graced Sigur Rós’ Icelandic festival with a rare solo set in 2017, where he played alongside the Tim Herzog, the drummer of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It was during that show that Kevin announced new My Bloody Valentine music would be coming in 2018.

No new songs have been released yet, but the band have been busy nonetheless, re-releasing two records earlier this year. The two albums, 1988’s “Isn’t Anything” and 1991’s “Loveless” are the first two My Bloody Valentine ever released, and were re-released as “all analogue versions”.

As for their 2018 show, the time they’d spent away from the stage showed, with the band suffering from technical difficulties and false starts. However, they quickly got it under control and delivered a show just as loud and unwieldy as fans were expecting, with earplugs even being handed out on the door to protect people against their famous volume.