Before this weekend, Bob Vylan was a rising punk band with about 273,000 monthly listeners on Spotify — hardly a household name.
Now, after leading chants of “Death, death to the I.D.F.” in reference to Israel’s army at the Glastonbury festival in England, it has become punk rock’s latest notorious act.
On Monday, British police opened a criminal investigation into the chant, shortly after Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Jewish groups condemned it as hate speech.
In the United States, the deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, said that the State Department had revoked visas for Bob Vylan’s members, meaning the band can no longer play a planned U.S. tour.
Despite all the attention now focused on the group, many people had never heard of it before. Here’s what you need to know.
Who is in Bob Vylan and what’s its music like?
A British punk-rap duo known for fast-paced, politically provocative songs, the group uses pseudonyms and deliberately obfuscates other biographical details. The singer goes by Bobby Vylan and the dummer by Bobbie Vylan
British news media have identified Bobby Vylan as Pascal Robinson-Foster, a former performance poet from Ipswich, a quiet English town.
Formed in 2017, the band achieved success in 2022 when it released “The Price of Life,” an album that reached the top 20 of Britain’s album chart. A follow-up last year, “Humble as the Sun,” includes songs decrying poverty, landlords and the British monarchy.
“Humble as the Sun” was critically acclaimed. Reviewing a live gig in the Times of London last spring, Stephen Dalton said the band was “incendiary” and ambitious, and compared it to a “slimmed down Rage Against the Machine.”
John Robb, a music journalist and punk singer, said that Bob Vylan had been on the verge of finding a mainstream audience in Britain, and noted that it was scheduled to headline a 3,500 capacity show in Manchester on Saturday.
What did the band say at Glastonbury?
The band’s set, performed in front of a Palestinian flag hung at the back of the stage, was broadcast on the BBC, which airs coverage of the festival. “You know this is live on the BBC so we have to be careful what we say,” Bobby Vylan said at one point.
Later, the singer led the crowd in a chant of “Free, free Palestine!” Then, he pivoted: “Aye, but have you heard this one?” the singer asked the crowd, before starting a chorus of “Death, death to the I.D.F.!” Fewer audience members appeared to join in for that than the earlier pro-Palestinian chant.
Robb, who was in the audience at Glastonbury, likened the band’s provocation to the Sex Pistols, one of punk rock’s formative bands, which caused outrage in 1976 with a television appearance in which its members used curse words.
“Provocation’s been part of rock music from day one,” Robb said, adding that the singer’s “job is not to provide a solution” to problems like the war in Gaza. “His job, as a politically motivated punk rock rapper, is to throw the question marks out,” Robb said.
Has the band chanted against Israel’s army before?
That’s unclear, although it has discussed the war in Gaza many times, including at the Coachella music festival in April during a U.S. tour where the group said “Free Palestine” onstage.
Bob Vylan’s members have said in interviews they had taken part in pro-Palestinian marches since before the band was formed. “If you have any moral compass, you understand the struggle,” Bobbie Vylan, the drummer, said last year in an interview with the British music magazine Kerrang.
After Israel began its military response to the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, the members of Bob Vylan chastised other punk bands that it said weren’t showing solidarity with the Palestinians.
It also altered its 2021 track “Pretty Songs” to include the lyrics, “Palestinian lives have always mattered / You were just never told so on TV.” That was one of the songs the band played during its Glastonbury set.
What does the furor mean for Bob Vylan’s future?
By losing its U.S. visa, the band won’t be able to play its fall American tour. It was meant to start in Spokane, Wash., on Oct. 24 and wrap in Los Angeles on Nov. 19.
This Saturday, the band is scheduled to headline the Radar music festival in Manchester. On Monday, an organization representing Jews in the city and its surrounding region urged the festival to cancel the concert. Radar did not respond to a request for comment.
Bob Vylan’s members said in a joint statement on Instagram that they were “not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race,” but “for the dismantling of a violent military machine.”
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
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