Review: Young Guns at Norwich Arts Centre, 24/3/12

Kicking off Saturday's show at the Arts Centre were young Leeds quintet Marmozets. Female fronted... math rock? I picked up on the post-hardcore side of it, but beyond that I'm not hugely familiar with the genre. One moment while I google...

So, Thrash Hits (ever reliable) has them down as "Dillinger Escape Plan x Paramore". For which read: math rock with great melodies and great female vocals. They've also been compared to Rolo Tomassi - take this as a good thing. I only ever here positive things about Rolo Tomassi. Getting side tracked here. What an amazing set. For such a young band, these guys really know how to put on a show. Throwing the audience straight in there with new(ish) track Onemanwolfpack, it was almost non-stop energy. Personally, (as a non-expert, I hasten to add) I think vocalist Becca could do with working on her unclean vocals a bit, but she still sounds amazing and her clean vocals were stunning. Brilliantly... twiddly? guitar work and overall just a hugely energetic set which ended with both vocalist and both guitarists in the pit. Folks really should have paid attention when guitarist Sam warned "You're going to want to back up, otherwise you're going to get a guitar in the neck" - or words to that effect. This was very much not what I'd initially expected at a Young Guns show, although at least I'd thought to look up Marmozets beforehand.

Moving on to the headliners. Well, awesome. Young Guns are pretty much straight up rock. Slight "emo" tendencies according to my housemate (lies). Diving straight in there with one of the band's heavier tracks, Elements, the set got off to a great start. There was a great balance between old and new material, something I'd been a little worried about given that the band are still promoting their most recent album and I'm not as keen on it as I was the debut. The crowd really got moving, although any attempts at a pit pretty much failed - Young Guns' music, personally, isn't exactly conducive to pit formation. Finishing with a trio of fan favourites in the form of Daughter of the Sea, Winter Kiss and Weight of the World, this was a triumphant return to Norwich for Young Guns and one that evidently went down well on this sold out night. The only thing lacking was an encore for this relatively short (45-50 min?) set. Ah well. Everyone seemed happy and that's what matters.

Marmozets set list (thanks to Josh MacIntyre for tweeting me this)
Onemanwolfpack, 9/10/11 - 12:13, Lives, Duels, The Perfect Beverage, Vexed

Young Guns set list (courtesy of it being on the sound desk right in front of me...)
Elements, Bones, D.O.A., Towers (On The Way), Crystal Clear, Brother In Arms, Stitches, Dearly Departed, Learn My Lesson, Daughter Of The Sea, Winter Kiss, Weight Of The World

Review: Kerrang! Tour 2012 at Norwich UEA LCR, 8/2/12

Kerrang! Relentless Energy Drink Tour 2012: New Found Glory, The Blackout, letlive. and While She Sleeps

Where to start with this wonderful gig? Well, the beginning would be a good place. Even better, let's start before the gig even kicked off. Two weeks before the tour, original headliners Sum 41 pulled out due to their vocalist having a back injury. All well and good, but the organisers then had to find a replacement at two weeks notice. Welsh post-hardcore guys The Blackout stepped in. Cue the shit slinging. Seriously, so much hate. Ah well, I personally prefer The Blackout over Sum 41, but I can understand that a lot of people were disappointed.

Moving on to the actual gig. Sheffield metalcore mob While She Sleeps kicked off proceedings with an amazingly slick set, powering through their tracks non-stop save for occasional instructions from frontman Loz to open up the pit or to engineer a wall of death or two. From experience, music of the While She Sleeps variety has a tendency to sound a bit messy live, but this really was brilliantly polished - great vocals, strong guitars and an immensely powerful rhythm section.

Next up was L.A. progressive post-hardcore crew letlive. who really got the crowd moving with their infectiously catchy, wonderfully raucous music. Once again, frontman Jason Aalon Butler got told off by security for climbing on the speaker stacks, but the highlight was undoubtedly the segue from a Black Flag cover to fan favourite "Muther". As I posted on my Twitter last night: words cannot describe how much I love Muther and it's infinitely more amazing live.

Following letlive.'s set there was something of a mass exodus from the LCR. I am going to put this down to the vast number of people who whinged about The Blackout playing and leave it at that. Personally, I'd rather people left than hung around and complained all the way through The Blackout's set as a group of guys next to me did. Incredibly irritating. But onto the actual set. This was my fourth time seeing The Blackout and they were just as wonderful as always. Launching their set with "I'm A Riot, You're A Fucking Riot", the crowd really got involved - evidently just as many fans as not. They followed this up with an assertion that "we're not Sum 41" and promptly covered said band's Fat Lip. And a pretty good cover at that. They might just have managed to claw back their position as "Zoe's Favourite Live Band", although that's largely because they slagged off all the people heckling them. To which I say, good for them and feel I must share this wonderful image.

Courtesy of deviantartsecret

And so finally we come to the headliners, pop-punkers New Found Glory. All in all a great set, but they're not a band I'm particularly interested in. Also, if anyone cares to comment, I'd really like to know if their vocalist is always quite so nasal. Anyhoos, I can't pick out individual songs (because I don't know them), but the cover of Green Day's Basketcase in their encore was a stroke of genius. Even people who hadn't really shown much interest earlier in NFG's set suddenly took notice and most of the crowd was singing along by the end. Overall a brilliant end to an awesome show.

Review: Madina Lake at the Waterfront, Norwich

Madina Lake at the Waterfront, Norwich, 17/11/11 (support from The Super Happy Fun Club & My Passion)

Genre: Alternative rock/electro-rock/post-hardcore

Madina Lake make a triumphant, but rather ignored return to the UK almost 18 months after their last tour here. Kicking off with fellow Chicago natives The Super Happy Fun Club, the venue's only really half full. Which is a shame, really, because while the vocalist doesn't have much in the way of stage presence, their set is slick, polished and bloody good fun. Considering most of the crowd seemed to have no idea who TSHC are, they all got into the swing of things. Definitely a band to watch.

Next up are English electro-rockers My Passion. Plenty of screaming fan(girls) for them. Their set is heavy on material from their second album, which I'm personally not so keen on, but the energy levels rocketed, the crowd got moving and the venue actually seemed to be filling more. That said, their main vocalist has the strangest ability to irritate me without even trying – he just seems so very full of himself. But hey, the music's good and the crowd enjoyed it.

Audience suitably primed, Madina Lake took to the stage with all the energy they had on that last tour. It's so nice to see that – bassist Matthew Leone was severely assaulted last year and it's wonderful to see he's made such a great recovery. The crowd obviously agreed with me – this really was a triumphant return. Kicking off with Imagineer from the latest album, the set was non stop, rattling through a range of songs from all three albums. So, OK, Nathan Leone's vocals weren't great, but the energy and the atmosphere more than made up for it. And this time I managed to not to get stuck on the edge of a mosh pit. Happy times for me. Closing with the awesome Pandora, they left a thoroughly satisfied crowd, confident that Madina are back with a vengeance and a dogged determination to just keep going. All that said, it's such a shame that the Waterfront still wasn't full.

Madina Lake setlist:

Imagineer, Adalia, Never Take Us Alive, Let's Get Out Of Here, House Of Cards, Now Or Never, One Last Kiss, Howdy Neighbour!, Hey Superstar, Here I Stand, Welcome To Oblivion, They're Coming For Me, True Love, Me Vs The World, Pandora (encore)

Review: Enter Shikari @ Norwich UEA, 5/10/11

Enter Shikari @ Norwich UEA (support from letlive. and Your Demise)

Barely five minutes into letlive.'s opening set and security are already telling their vocalist off for climbing on the speaker stacks. The set got off to a somewhat lacklustre start, given the hype around letlive.'s live act, but a couple of songs in it became clear that this is a band to watch. Loud, energetic and non-stop, they're a perfect opening band so I can only imagine how amazing it would be to see them play a full, headline set. In amongst the high octane tracks was a little gem in the form of “Muther”. Beautiful, melodic and a great track to involve the crowd. I admit to being almost completely unaware of letlive. other than knowing they played some sort of post-hardcore. After tonight's set, however, I'm hooked. Actually, I'm listening to one of their albums as I type this.

While Your Demise certainly matched letlive. in volume and general raucousness, their set felt a little messy. They play hardcore of some description (which I'll admit to not being a huge fan), but while there were a few moments of brilliance, their tracks just didn't have the intensity of letlive.'s. The structure of the set itself also felt slightly stilted – there was a fair bit of talking in between tracks, which isn't a bad thing, but there has to be that balance between talking and playing.

So, after a slightly disappointing set from Your Demise, we moved onto the headliners, the band I really wanted to see. Enter Shikari. Brief introduction needed, methinks. Enter Shikari play post-hardcore, with strong electronic influences (especially dubstep on more recent releases). I've seen them twice before and they're incredibly high energy and very big on crowd involvement. Tonight's show lived up to, even surpassed expectations. With a set taking in tracks from both LPs as well as recent singles Destabilise and Quelle Surprise, there was something to please fans of all their material. The light show was, as always, brilliant although it must suck to be an epileptic Shikari fan – I've not seen them play without strobes yet. Sad to say they didn't play Fanfare For The Concious Man, but having played so many fan favourites and closing with Juggernauts and OK, Time For Plan B, Enter Shikari really are a band that you need to see live to really appreciate.

“We are the world and we are the people and we will be heard.” - Fanfare for the Concious Man - Enter Shikari

Rough setlist for Enter Shikari (not in order)
Destabilise, Mothership, Zzzonked, Hectic, The Jester, No Sssweat, Sssnakepit, Return To Energiser, Sorry You're Not A Winner, Gap In The Fence, No Sleep Tonight, Quelle Surprise.

Encore: Juggernauts, OK Time For Plan B.

Band of the Week: Bayside, Nine Inch Nails, Enter Shikari

'K, so Band of the Week is getting a bit revamped. And by that I mean simply that I am a lazy cow who very rarely remembers to write a post about a single artist. As such, Band of the Week is going to become more of a feature jobby, showcasing random stuff that I've found in the last week or so. I'll probably still forget to post, but it's worth a try. Anyways, on with the show.

Firstly, Bayside. I've known about them for a few years now and have always loved their song Masterpiece from the album Sirens and Condolences. However, me being me, totally kept forgetting to check them out properly. And then they played at Soundwave in February so I thought they deserved my attention properly. Then I promptly forgot again and then last week I got Sick, Sick, Sick from their latest album Killing Time stuck in my head so I bought the album. Suffice to say, it's made of awesome.

Also, rambling paragraph is rambling. Bayside are pretty much straight up rock. Really good, makes you want to move sort of rock. Sick, Sick, Sick is a good example as is Seeing Sound (also from Killing Time).

I've mentioned Nine Inch Nails before and they hardly need mentioning again, but I got hold of The Downward Spiral and Pretty Hate Machine this week and felt the need to gush about them. I love them. Not entirely sure why I didn't check 'em out sooner. Anyways, have a listen to Heresy, Closer and Reptile from The Downward Spiral and Head Like A Hole, Terrible Lie and That's What I Get from Pretty Hate Machine. TDS is a bit heavier than PHM, but they're both awesome. Good industrial rock. The video for Closer is also pretty cool. Weird, slightly disturbing, but cool. And Trent Reznor was hot when he was younger.

Finally, Enter Shikari. I LOVE Enter Shikari. Anyhoo, found out this week that they're playing at my uni in October so guess who's excited? Enter Shikari are not everyone's cup of tea. They play a peculier brand of electronic post-hardcore often labelled as trancecore for it's dance influences. It's not a combination that goes down well with everyone and I know some fans now are getting annoyed because their more recent work is heavily dubstep influenced. That said, I still love them. They put on an amazing live show and they're very much worth checking out. Try Adieu, No Sssweat, Mothership and Labyrinth from Take To The Skies, Zzzonked, Antwerpen and The Jester from Common Dreads and the two latest singles Destabilise and Quelle Surprise. Love the Zzzonked video - I was at that gig (trying my hardest to avoid falling in the numerous mosh pits).

That'll do, right? Check it out, let me know what you think and pass it on.

Band of the Week: The Blackout

Ah, The Blackout. Currently rock with post-hardcore bits. Prior to the latest album, they were more post-hardcore. Welsh. Mad. Totally epically awesome. And this morning I got the aforementioned latest album and I can totally see why Blunt gave it a 4/5 star review.

I've not written a review myself yet. That can wait till I've had a few more listens. Besides, this is Band of the Week. This is my opportunity to gush about how much I love them. And I do indeed love them. The Blackout have grown on me slowly. I first looked into them about 2 years ago after I found out they were playing at Give It A Name 2009. Second billing, no less. I wasn't too fond of them then. But then, I wasn't at all fond of Enter Shikari at the time (who were headlining Give It A Name). That show introduced me to some awesome live bands. I fell madly in love with Enter Shikari. Not so much with The Blackout, but I knew then that they were amazing live. Late 2009 I found out they were playing the Kerrang! Tour in January 2010. Second billing again. Well, I knew they were awesome live, plus All Time Low and Young Guns were also playing and I was already in love with them. Once again, I loved The Blackout's live performance. Downloaded a few tracks.

Those few tracks got quite obsessively played and I spent several months trying to decide whether to buy their albums or not. In the end, I decided that while I loved them live, they didn't quite translate that energy to disc. And then comes the announcement of the line up for Soundwave 2011. The Blackout are in there. Along with a bunch of other bands I love. But The Blackout. I knew that even if I didn't get to see some of the other bands I wanted to, I HAD to see The Blackout again. Suffice to say, they didn't disappoint. If you've read my post about Soundwave, you'll know how much I loved that set. Probably the best set I've seen of any band ever. (and I totally just realised I've mispelled Soundwave in the title of that post. Oops.) So totally awesome. So awesome, in fact that I finally got my arse in gear and downloaded their albums. And then spent the next month up until today waiting for new album Hope to be released. Oh, so scrummy. The main album is brilliant, but the deluxe edition (not labelled deluxe on iTunes, but it's the deluxe for physical versions) includes four covers and two acoustic tracks. So so lovely.

Basically, The Blackout are awesome. Even more awesome live. They're on tour in the UK at the moment, but I'm pretty sure almost every show's sold out. That is how awesome they are. So, check 'em out (preferably live), let me know what you think and pass it on.

Assorted The Blackout links:
Official site
Last.FM
Myspace
Youtube or check out Epitaph Records' channel for some music vids

Recommended tracks:
From The Blackout! The Blackout! The Blackout!: I'm A Riot? You're A Fucking Riot!, It's High Tide Baby
From We Are The Dynamite: I've Got Better Things To Do Tonight Than Die, Spread Legs Not Lies, She Is Macho
From The Best In Town: Save Our Selves (The Warning), ShutTheFuckUppercut, Children Of The Night, I Love Myself And I Wanna Live, We're Going To Hell...So Bring The Sunblock
From Hope: Ambition Is Critical, Higher & Higher, Hope (Scream It Out Loud), You're Not Alone (acoustic), Save Tonight (Eagle-Eye Cherry cover)

Band Of The Week: super-mega-awesome feature... promise

Well, I didn't really feel like doing a proper Band Of The Week blog this week. So, instead, here's a few bands/artists I think everyone should check out.

Aamir al-Loki: Wonderfully odd self-described goth-pop. I'd put it closer to electronic rock, but goth-pop will do. Make sure to check out her new album Kill Your Demons. (Yes, I know I already wrote about her last week, but I'm just emphasising the point.)

Ahab: Funeral doom metal. I've never listened to doom metal in my life, but I'm pretty much in love with Ahab. Brilliantly atmospheric, plus their work's based on Moby Dick and whatnot. Someone on last.fm called it "whalecore". Made me smile.

The Damned Things: Pretty much straight up rock, with some melodic metal influences. Fall Out Boy + Anthrax + Every Time I Die evidently = a brilliant combination.

The Left Rights: Brainchild of Jimmy Urine and Steve, Righ? from Mindless Self Indulgence. Bizarre, crude, not all that imaginative, but good fun. Warning: may offend. No, seriously, may offend. I've seen the comments on some of their stuff.

Me And The Mountain: English, female-fronted rock. And if you dare compare them to Paramore I'm likely to kill you. Just because it's a female fronted rock band doesn't make it like Paramore. Besides, Me And The Mountain are shitloads better than Paramore. The debut EP Ruthless is due out at the beginning of February - should be on the iTunes store.

Get Scared: Post-hardcore type stuff. Or possibly rock with post-hardcore influences. Who needs this whole Black Veil Brides hype when you can have Get Scared and they're so much better?

The Blackout: More post-hardcore. Better live than on disc, so if you get the chance to see one of their gigs, take it. Although I warn you, it may mangle your knees. Check out their new track too - free download at the mo.

Last but not least, the wonderful Emilie Autumn, love of my life. Well, my musical life and she's a gorgeous woman too. Hey, a girl can dream. Ahem. Self-labelled "victoriandustrial", look out for the epic electric violin solos against industrial beats. On top of all that scrumminess is her voice. Eargasm, much. Seriously, go check her out. Hmm... maybe next week's band of the week can be for EA. Seeing as she's my favourite musician and all that and I don't babble about her enough. Mmm.

Anyways, go check them out, tell me what you think and pass it on.

Band of the Week: Escape The Fate

I think a bit of background's in order, given the subject that I'm going to focus on here. Escape the Fate are a (mainly) post-hardcore band, formed in 2004. Their vocalist and lyricist for the first release was Ronnie Radke. The band kicked him out in 2007/2008 following issues with drugs and his arrest for battery. He got locked up for some period of time (which I haven't been able to find out). So, the band took on a new vocalist, Craig Mabbitt, formerly of blessthefall and The Word Alive. They've since released a second album (This War Is Ours) and are due another set for release in November.

Now, there is nothing, in my opinion, especially distinctive about Escape the Fate. I love them, but they're just a fairly generic post-hardcore band. Nothing wrong with that. So, instead of trying to explain why I like them, other than that I'm pretty much in love with post-hardcore/alternative rock stuff, I'm going to focus on the whole Craig vs. Ronnie debate.

As I just explained, Mr. Radke got kicked out because he got arrested for various things and was basically preventing the band from touring. Fair do's. New vocalist comes on board, new album gets released and suddenly you have a whole bunch of fans who think ETF was better when Ronnie was doing the vocals. I only got into them in early 2009, so I missed the initial reaction, but I can imagine it was pretty huge. Every site I see that has ETF on has this huge debate about which vocalist is better and then you get the majority of sane (but quiet) people who point out that they both have their good and bad points and hey, if the guy's gonna muck around and get himself locked up, the band were hardly going to wait for him. But they're definitely the quiet ones. The loud ones are largely Ronnie supporters (from what I've personally seen) who provide very little support for their assertions that Craig is a crap vocalist other than a lot of expletives and repetition of the phrases "ETF was better with Ronnie", "ETF sucks now", "Ronnie MADE ETF" and numerous variations on them. Some have suggested that the band should no longer be called Escape The Fate because the founder member isn't part of it any more. At which point I hasten to point out that bassist Max Green has also been with the band from the beginning and, from what I can gather, so have drummer Robert Ortiz and guitarist Bryan "Monte" Money.

I have so far refrained from wading into this argument (I don't think it can really be called a debate, with such crappy arguments/evidence) for fear of getting mauled by rabid, pissed off fans. So I'm being a coward and doing so from the safety of my quiet little blog. Here follow my thoughts on the matter. If you're a fan who's likely to get offended by someone else's opinions, you should probably leave now.

I can hear very little difference in the vocals. Yes, I can tell it's two different people, but from Ronnie's on Dying Is Your Latest Fashion to Craig's on This War Is Ours, I can honestly say they both sound very similar. This is not a bad thing - it's good for continuity. Personally, I think Craig's vocals are slightly stronger and he seems to have more range, but other than that... nope, can't see what the problem is. Wow, that was shorter than I thought it'd be.

There's been a slight change in the sound of the band overall between the two albums, but once again, it's nothing major. Anyway, a change in sound is to be expected - you can't expect a band to stay the same for their whole career, it'd be boring. Where DIYLF is mainly straight up emo-tinged post-hardcore, This War Is Ours to me is more varied, with some almost pop-rock moments on Ashley and Something to the heavier tones of This War Is Ours (The Guillotine Part II). This is good - I like variety in an album. And then there's It's Just Me, which I personally think is a brilliant track, but I've seen people label it as too poppy and someone went as far as to compare it to Panic! At The Disco. I love Panic! and I don't think It's Just Me sounds anything like their work.

All in all, this whole Ronnie vs. Craig thing sounds to me like a lot of fans who can't cope with the fact that bands change and that if someone's going to fuck around as much as Ronnie did, the band has little choice but to act as they did. They could hardly wait for him to be released before they went on tour or recorded again, could they? Also, if those fans love his vocals so much, he's part of a new band now - can they not just listen to them instead? Hmm? Right, babble over.

Assorted Escape The Fate links:
MySpace
Last.FM

Recommended Tracks (album)
Situations, Not Good Enough For Truth In Cliche, The Webs We Weave, Reverse This Curse (Dying Is Your Latest Fashion)
The Flood, This War Is Ours (The Guillotine Part II), It's Just Me, 10 Miles Wide, Bad Blood (b-side) (This War Is Ours)