I could go on and on about events that took place before, during and after but we’ll leave that for the forums. This is the nitty gritty; the music, the stuff that we all came to see. And boy, did the boys (and girl) come up trumps. The Underworld has an amazing sound system I have to say, the sheer volume for a start, but the sound is so thick it makes me wonder why a lot of the northern venues aren’t comparable. STORIES AND COMETS got us off to a flying start with the Teeside trio (made up of members of My Favourite Co-Pilot and Caught In The Headlights) coming across like The Used fronted by Poison The Well. The new material is a lot more brash and ballsy than MFCP with John’s vocals barely stopping for breath as he shouts, screams and lyrically bludgeons his way through the rapidly-filling venue. ‘Bend Not Break’ is their best song as it maintains a melody and vocal line that begs attention. It’s still rough around the edges, but the signs are very promising – Phil is a very capable and energetic guitarist and his backing vocals add a warmth to the sound. It’s bigger, but not quite better than MFCP – but give them time. The signs are all there for SaC to make a big impact. (8)

I missed nearly all of RIGHT TURN CLYDE because of a problem with tickets and the fact I didn’t realise I could get free beer. But what I did see impressed me greatly. Their new EP is very, very impressive and I can’t wait to see them again, which I hope will be very soon. Sorry guys! (n/a)

Anyone who saw ROUTE 215 will be talking about this performance for months to come. I’m a big fan and could be biased, but a friend of mine who had never even heard of the band before tonight was blown away too. The best single set I have seen all year – now is their time. In the last 12 months 215 have become quite the live beast; their energy was always there but now as a settled foursome, and with a clutch of songs as good as any US pop-punk band can muster, it’s simply a matter of time before this lot go supernova. There are too many highlights to mention, new songs fit snugly into the set alongside the likes of ‘GTT’ and ‘Echo’, while ‘Steal Your Soul’ is a massive hit-in-waiting. Rod is on fire, despite a croaky voice, and with a twirling, pirouetting and exciteable twin guitar pairing alongside him, Route 215 look as good as they sound. ‘Ghost Rock’, however, is the icing on an already delicious cake as Kelly Kemp takes the stage to belt out the band’s duet. We may not see this again for quite some time and it didn’t disappoint. In 12 months time Route 215 are going to be huge and I can’t wait for it to happen. Just watch… (10)

STEEL RULES DIE had a lot to live up to but did it with ease. With a drummer stuck in transit and arriving a little late to scare us promoters, they upped the ante as we knew they could. After all, you don’t support AFI for nothing. Sadly I only saw three songs, although I could hear several more and I was gobsmacked at the energy, presence and…well, oomph for a better word, that SRD possess. Quite the slick beast, we will be hearing a hell of a lot more from this lot next year as the new stuff sounds just as aggressive as ‘Nostalgia For Beginners’. (n/a)

Speaking of high-profile supports, you also don’t support Lagwagon, Alkaline Trio and Mest, and bag a place on the Deconstruction main stage, without having a truckload of anthemic pop-punk songs. FLETCHER do singalong punk with consumate ease, and despite having had a drink (I saw you…:)) Lee and co blast out a firey set that got everyone going. I can’t remember what the band played (I’d had a drink as well!), although ‘Signal 109’ sticks out and I think they may have played ‘Idiot Me’ and ‘Wasted’ too, but whether they did or not the band have that appeal to suck you in and deliver those charming hooks like I eat fish suppers. Their ‘My Revenge’ album is just as tasty as well you know… (9)

The last night of the tour was always going to be a good one for NOCOMPLY – and boy, was it a good one! I don’t care what anyone says, NC are the best band in the country right now. There’s nobody better and when the album hits the streets next summer, the band will break big. Weeks and weeks of touring has really paid off and for 40 minutes the band have 350 people eating out of the palm of their hands. It’s amazing they only have one guitarist as Jon creates enough power and inventiveness to cover for at least two, while Oz and Matt twist, turn and tantalise the front row. Again there are too many highlights and words don’t do it justice – the new material is amazing, ‘Your Life…’ gets a massive singalong at the end and everything they did turned to gold. I even had the privilige of watching the band from the side of the stage with the other bands and you can see the passion and energy that really goes into a NoComply show. Not just that mind, you can also see the huge grins on each member’s face – and that for me summed up the whole mood of the bash. It was fun. Boy was it fun. (10)

The atmosphere was amazing, the best I’ve ever seen at a gig. There was such a community feel, despite the fact most people had never met each other. The bands rocked, there was cake and the alcohol flowed – out of some people as well as in the rest of us. December 6 was the pinnacle of our Punktastic career so far. If it gets any better or any bigger than this…wow.

Paul

The Plymouth skacore band are ultra-friendly and approachable people and are easy interviewees, even if they admit to not have been grilled all that often. They’re chatty, opinionated and brutally honest which obviously makes for a great interview. Of course some are more honest than others and it seems tonight bassist Nick just wants to vent all his fury on a certain magazine – and justifiably so. As many of you probably know, one magazine laughingly said that the band were fronted by a man and in a live review compared Kelly to No Doubt songstress Gwen Stefani, so early on in the interview I asked Kelly to tell me why she is nothing like the ‘Hey Baby’ crooner. The question is met with giggles. “It’s not that I’ve got anything against her,” she says. “Normally being compared to her would be really good, but, arghh, I want to smack him [the journalist].”
“The Kerrang one was the worst,” guitarist Jon Dailey said. “I mean, ‘they’ve even got the blonde singer’, it’s like we intentionally got a blonde singer.”
“But I can’t even hear a comparison,” chips in bassist Nick. “I want to know where they are coming from. If they’re meant to be writers on the music scene, they should fucking listen and judge us.”
“It makes you wonder if they get paid and they slag us off I’d rather they described us well,” Jon adds.
“No girl could possibly be in a UK band and not listen to No Doubt,” Kelly suggests sarcastically. “Having a female singer works for us, people do say ‘oh it’s the band with the girl singer.”
Jon adds: “But we don’t go and see some male singer in a band and go ‘oh, it’s the band with the bloke singer’.”
“I’ve always got to be Gwen Stefani, Cinder Block or Brody,” Kelly laughs. “If I dye my hair black I can be Brody!”
“It’s quite a cool comparison because if they want to compare us to No Doubt, then fucking great ‘cos we’re better!” Nick states to laughing bandmates. “There’s a Punktastic news headline – We are better than No Doubt.” Cue bandmate hysterics.
“The thing that does piss me off is when they haven’t done a true review it really puts you down. You think, it’s fucking Kerrang. I don’t like it but I buy it to read it. I think it’s not fair on bands because all the kids buy it and when they buy it they read it and listen to what they have to say. That can damage a reputation – they can warp youngsters minds and that was what pissed me off the most.”

But dodgy comparisons aside, things are looking very good indeed for NoComply. With an EP out to critical acclaim by the people in the know and with a solid fanbase growing by the day, Plymouth should be proud of it’s sons (and daughter). The band admit that whenever they return to a town they’ve played previously there is always a decent response.
“We don’t get a mass of people but there’s a good crowd now who come and see us if we’ve played before,” Jon states. “Signing stuff is always weird though.”
“I remember the first thing I signed,” laughs Nick. “We had just started as a band and a friend came up and said can you sign this, and I was like, woah! That was the first one. At first I was like, ‘nah’ because you’re no different to me, except I’m a bass player. I didn’t know why they wanted it.”
The assorted array of items the band have signed is also a laughing matter. Kelly believes a pair of socks are the strangest thing she’s scribbled on alongside a Good Charlotte cd and trombonist Oz happens to admit to signing parts of the female anatomy.
“We played in Plymouth a few weeks ago at a school and people were bringing their guitars and stuff. That was weird,” Jon adds.

With Plymouth their home town, NoComply admit that during the early days they weren’t all that popular.
“People fucking hated us,” Nick said. “In Plymouth there’s a lot of bad feeling between bands. It’s like they didn’t like us because we were getting out and doing something. They didn’t like the fact that we were getting out on tour and getting somewhere. There’s only two bands that will come up to us, one of them is The Once Over Twice. The young punk bands don’t like us.”
“There’s nothing to be jealous about,” Jon adds, “they can do it if they put in the hard work.”
Amazingly, despite their hectic work schedule, some members of NoComply still manage to hold onto jobs when they are home. Kelly works as a waitress, Nick and Jon work as printers and Oz “flips burgers”.

For the future, an album is planned for late this year and the band will continue to tour their collective asses off for as long as possible.
“The southern dates are always really good ones,” said Jon. “Worcester, London Underworld, there all good shows.”
A video has also been planned for the likes of P-Rock and other assorted music channels. “There’s a bunch of live stuff,” says Jon. “But we don’t know if they’ll play it,” Kelly interjects. The band then disect a couple of number one videos from the channel and question just exactly how they made it. Zen Baseball Bat and Whitmore are two of the bans who, they believe, didn’t have number one-worthy tracks. There’s even talk of a split EP but at the moment that’s all it is. As yet no bands have even been asked about the project, but MU330, Digger and Link 80 are bands that NoComply would love to work with.
“You don’t want it to be too similiar,” Jon adds. “If we did it with Howard’s Alias it would be too obvious.”

On top of that there’s Kelly’s duet with Route 215 on a song on the London boys forthcoming new record.
“I’d like to say that I had some part in the writing but I didn’t at all,” she laughs. “Rod was at one of our gigs, at Summerslam, and then he phoned up. Everyone was saying before that Rod writes really rude lyrics and I said ‘I can’t sing anything too rude’!”
Although as of yet the two bands haven’t played together live yet, NoComply hope that audiences up and down the country will get to see the duet in all its glory sooner rather than later.

One of NoComply’s career highlights so far was sharing a bill with US pop-punkers Good Charlotte earlier in the year and they admit it was a real eye-opener.
“You watch their stage show and they give it so much,” said Nick. “I was stood there open mouthed. I felt so sick beforehand.”
“I couldn’t speak all day because my throat was so fucked,” adds Kelly. “I don’t know how we got through.”
“They are like, rock stars,” interjects Jon. “They seemed nice guys, they were so professional. There were crying girls and a few banners.”
“Kiss me Benji!” laughs Kelly and the band again join in the banter suggesting ‘Kiss Me Oz’ banners for their young trombonist who it would appear does seem to attract his fair share of female attention.
“People say bands shouldn’t sign to majors and stuff, and I don’t think you should compromise your beliefs, but if you’ve got an offer and you can sit down it’s so silly to say I want to stay underground because if you have a good positive message to put across then loads of people should hear it,” adds Kelly.
“There are some bands that should go on and take what they are saying to new people, alter their perceptions. I’m not one of those people who would stay independent and stuff. There are some bands who get ‘they can’t sign to a major’ and shit. I mean Capdown, they have such a positive message.”
“Capdown are the purveyors of our scene,” adds Jon. “They were the first band, without them half of our style of bands wouldn’t be anywhere. They work so hard. They deserve whatever they get.”

Our conversation continues into the night discussing certain issues of the delay and mutual love (and hate) for certain bands. NoComply later get up on stage and rock out to 150 kids, it’s a great show with lots of energy and it’s clear to see exactly why the band are highly rated. Whether Kerrang likes them or not is irrelevant, because NC are an exciting young band with a bright future ahead of them. The Rx Bandits and Nerf Herder better watch out later this year – because a certain Plymouth six-piece will be tearing up venues before they even hit the stage.

www.nocomply.co.uk

The first two bands on stage, CHAOS and MISDIRECTION are both bad bands. I don’t know who was who, but the first band were the worst. So as NoComply arrive I slink off to their dressing room and interview them. Nice chaps they are too, I hasten to add. I return from the cavernous backstage dressing room (which has no food or drink for them – indeed water is ¶œ1 a bottle for the band which is a disgrace – promoter take note) to catch our top tips for the top, TOMORROW NEVER CAME. The band are steadily progressing well and if it wasn’t for a series of technical problems, they would really have showcased their talents tonight. Coming across like the bastard offspring of Audio Karate and Rufio, TNC have brought a few friends along with them and they sing along to the likes of the catchy ‘It’s All Gone’ and newie ‘A Winter’s Kiss’. Technically TNC are very able musicians, but the PA system tonight is terrible. The guitars sound out of synch and this seems to put vocalist Paul off. Tom’s bass strap breaks clean off as he attempts a jump – and it would appear that only Phill’s drumming escapes unscathed. For me ‘A Face In A Photograph’ is still their best song, full of adventure and originality, reminding me of Rufio with all the fantastic lead guitar parts. On record this band really cut the mustard, but live they are certainly still learning their trade. There’s a lack of interaction between band and crowd, including a near two-minute silence when PA repairs are on-going, but the movement now seems more natural and there’s less static time on stage. However, a few more rock star poses need to be thrown and natural movement will keep things even more exciting. TNC are a young band with an abundance of talent and even though tonight wasn’t their best show, I know they have it in them to keep on improving and getting better. (7)

I disappear again as BLINDED BY IVAN hit the stage to chat to Kelly and various other band members at their merch stand, but it would appear that these young ska punks may be on to a winner. Blasting out with all horns blazing, it is difficult to hear and see what is going on through a closed door, but what you can hear sounds promising enough. The cover of ‘Live and Let Die’ goes down a treat – and I think it’s safe to say that Scunthorpe will be hearing more of this lot in the near future.

That leads NOCOMPLY to the stage and the gulf in class is massive. With a stage presence that amply fills the big Baths Hall platform, the Plymouth skacore band rock a quarter-full crowd into the early hours of Saturday morning. Having driven over nine hours to get here, there’s absolutely no sign of tiredness at all as all of the tracks from their new EP ‘Your Life Is Your Direction’ are blasted out. The PA, which has had niggly problems all night, holds out and a small number of kids skank away like their lives depended on it. The energy levels are phenomenal and the confidence exuding from the stage is easily apparent. ‘Falling From Crosses’ sounds absolutely massive, the riffs are huge and the band look as though they’re having fun on stage. Deck Cheese are lucky to have this lot – the chorus in this song is amazing and it’s a personal favourite of mine. Guitarist Jon kicks and jumps his way through the album’s title track, while Oz screams along with backing vocals, acting as Kelly’s perfect foil. The vocalist is an abundance of energy, working the crowd playfully in between songs and with a fantastic voice to boot. There’s an extra edge to the live performance that is slightly missing from the EP, as Kelly scowls and screams her way through ‘Decide’ while Jon and Nick batter their instruments into oblivion. It’s no wonder why they’ve been pissed off with the mainstream media’s notions that they are ‘just another ska band’. You try telling them that as they throw everything but the kitchen sink at ‘Rejected‘. The horns sound great and the drums are perfect throughout as Kelly tells Scunthorpe (complete with fake northern accent) that she’s “not in love with you.” The slower ‘Background Action’ gets the kids skanking along and after a few older songs are sprinkled in for good measure, the gig ends with Kelly ditching her mic for a spot with the kids at the front as they push and shove their way to the time of the music. In short, NoComply are fucking awesome tonight and listening to the EP again on the way home, you can’t fail not to be impressed. NoComply have a tortuous tour schedule coming up and they will be visiting a town near you this year. You absolutely owe it to yourselves to see one of the freshest and exciting live bands around. (9)

Paul