(venue – The Subculture, Leeds)
The Subculture is pretty damn full tonight, even for the opening band. But most people were surely left both confused and stupeified by the band whose name escapes me. Completely out of place and completely devoid of talent, nobody even bothered to boo, preferring to remain in a state of shock. notworthgrading/10
Next up are can’t-decide-what-genre-to-play outfit Cross My Heart. The namesake of the Deep Elm band spent about 20 minutes tuning up to play a 4 (?) song set. A drummer with no sense of time and a vocalist with no idea how to sing are prime reasons why this is the one of, if not the, worst band I’ve ever seen. This is the sort of shit that happens when you try and develop a band from a fucking clothing label. Get a fucking grip. The only highlight was Punktastic’s very own Si bellowing to the entire club: “I’ve seen you sucking cock on the internet”, to which the band quickly departed the stage. Hallelujah. I’drathercircumcisemyself/10
Considering the shower of shite that’s gone before them, Chaos Days pretty much only have go through the motions to be seen as musical revolutionaries. Playing a set that seems designed to appeal to the hardcore type who has a strange obsession with New Found Glory, there’s a small degree of enjoyment to be had here. The band itself seem fairly tight and the tunes catchy and well structured, but their singer just doesn’t have the range of Jordan Pundik. Such vocal disappointments didn’t completely ruin everything, though, so I guess that’s something. 6/10
First and foremost, I’m a dirty little No Trigger fanboy, as you’ll see by looking up the review I wrote for Canyoneer about 18 months ago. Vocal delivery is spot on and guitars are as widdly as they come, but The Subculture is a club and not a venue, and the band are hampered by the limitations of both the physical space available to them and the overall sound. Despite this, a near-identical set to what they played on their support tour of A Wilhelm Scream in January is knocked out with a degree of aplomb. The band seemed to recognise, however, that the next time they appear they’ll need to be throwing in a few new songs to keep things fresh. Great fun. 8/10
Having ripped open a scab on my arm and been drenched in sweat during No Trigger, I move towards the more sedate end of the venue for Set Your Goals, which happened to give a pretty good view as things decidedly “went off”. The physical interchange of their two singers on-stage is very reminiscent of hiphop duo and they work the crowd into a complete frenzy opening, as ever, it seems, with ‘Mutiny‘ and powering through the rest of the crowd’s favourites from both the album and the EP. Again, sound limitations aside, this was top drawer, and the inclusion of a short encore which included a version of the theme tune from The Fresh Prince of Bell-Air was very welcome, even if they didn’t finish it. 8/10