MAY
26 LEEDS Slam Dunk Festival
27 HATFIELD University Slam Dunk Festival
28 CARDIFF Uni Slam Dunk Wales
29 SOUTHAMPTON Cellar
30 BRIGHTON Hydrant

JUNE
01 LONDON Scala Facedown

Their new EP ‘Chapter II’ is set for releae on 11th June in the UK.

http://www.facebook.com/theauditionband

Spud wanted to review the next band:

MAYDAY PARADE, Paul told me, are “fun pop punk and a bit NFG ish”. Personally, on today’s showing, I think they’re one of the sorriest showers of shit I’ve ever seen. A hundred cliches, bad choreography, and worst of all they’re lapped up by the kids they’ve conned. If you like this band and your age is into double figures then you need to take a serious look at your life. This is utterly inexcusable. (0)

Back to me again.

Craig Owens welcomes CHIODOS to the stage by calling the crowd ‘teenybopper Brits’. He then berates fashion, myspace and in effect slanders 99 per cent of the audience. Chiodos go over the heads of nearly everyone – they’re totally out of place between Mayday Parade and MC Lars. Still, they have a huge sound, limitless energy and they fill the main stage as well as any band all weekend. And their amps had the slogan ‘go get fcked’ written on them. That sums the band up perfectly. They’re spot on with their comments – I wish most of this audience would go get fucked. Truth be told, they probably do too. (7)

MC LARS is the perfect festival band, warming up the crowd and keeping them entertained and involved. Running through a greatest hits set with Failsafe a very able backing band, Lars keeps everyone on the edge of their seat – and singing along. He’s also very funny, dedicating ‘signing emo’ to “every other band playing tonight.” (7)

Why Gabe Saporta ditched Midtown for the comedic COBRA STARSHIP is a mystery. Entertaining visually, the band are very poor live. Gabe cannot
hit any high notes so uses a sexy swagger to try and cover it up. The kids love it mind, as ‘Guilty Pleasures’ and the closing ‘Snakes on a Plane’
spark huge singalongs. Doesn’t make them any better mind. (5)

I’d rather eat a turd than watch MY AMERICAN HEART, so we opted for a hot dog instead. I’m not a single bloke, which is a good job as most of the girls in attendance are either 12, overly made up, look like boys, dressed badly (if you’re a size 18 don’t wear skinny jeans!) Or all of the above. As a result we stopped looking for hot girls as I was scared we’d get arrested.

SET YOUR GOALS seem weirdly out of place on such a big stage and while they’re a lot of fun, the two singers sound off key and they strangely skip
across the stage, like they don’t really know what to do. The band race through all their best tracks and while they’re not the worst band of the weekend, they probably need to stick to smaller venues – for the time being at least. (6)

There’s a decent buzz about ALL TIME LOW and, shock horror, they conquer the poor sound and are easily the band of the day so far. They know how to
work a crowd, they can genuinely sing and throw shapes at the same time (take note Mayday Parade) and they clearly have an ear for a tune. The US
is going crazy for ATL right now and the UK is sure to follow suit. (8)

FINCH prowl the main stage like they own it. To be fair they’re arguably the only band of the day with any experience of playing large festivals. They’ve been away two years and very few kids are into it, but Finch launch into ‘Worms of the Earth’ and then ‘Letters To You’ with some ferocity. New track ‘Daylight‘ is a vicious beast as Nate Barcalow screams his lungs out, while closer ‘What It Is To Burn’ again sails over the heads of most of the kids. Truth be told, Finch are back – and close to being back to their best. (8)

THE AUDITION looked very dapper in their matching garb, but after their opening track we left. Not just the arena, but the venue itself. Time to go home, even before Alkaline Trio, PWTs and Paramore. I think I’m either getting too old for this shit or, more likely, there are just a lot of bad bands around at the minute. GIAN was massively undersold. I’d say the venue was probably a third full and that is taking into account the top seating area is all cordoned off. Why? I don’t know. Too expensive? Maybe, but then other festivals are worse. Poor line-up? I’m not sure, Paramore are huge right now and there are enough other bands on show with large fanbases. So why did people not come to GIAN?

I can’t fault the organisers. The bill is made up of bands that are officially pretty hot right now, but throw in terrible, terrible sound, a lack of people creating next to no atmosphere and screaming little girls squealing whenever Cobra Starship or one of the other pop bands wave at them and you you’ve got something horrendously soulless. Ironically The Blackout got it right on day one – they urged fans to dance and have a good time. “You’re at a rock show,” they screamed – but GIAN 2008 wasn’t a rock show. It was full of people who put more pride into style than substance.

This isn’t supposed to be a rant or critical of any band that played because I don’t think the fault lies with them. Popularity with music is cyclical – maybe it’s time some of these bands and genres died off to try and put something new, fresh and exciting back into the music stream. Because right now pop-punk and all it’s genres are smack, bang in the middle of the mainstream and something is very, very wrong.

“It’s been really good fun so far. Even though a lot of people are definitely here for Biffy, a lot of the kids from the Aiden tour are coming back, and there’s definitely some faces I recognise. I think we’ve won some Biffy fans over too”.

Since their last jaunt around the UK supporting Aiden in late 2006, theAUDITION’s popularity has exploded at an alarming rate. With constant press coverage and now a slot on the Kerrang! Tour, things are definitely looking up for the Chicago fivesome. You’d imagine with a line-up of I am Ghost, The Bronx and Biffy themselves, there’d be some pretty heavy partying going on this time around.

“Actually, we haven’t been hitting it nearly as hard as last time. When we were with Aiden, we could go out, get fucked up and just pass out on the tourbus, but this time around we’re in a van so it’s not as easy.”

Since the release of their second full-length ‘Controversy loves company’ way back in 2005, theAUDITION have been touring constantly, mainly in the states, so you’d expect the magic to have worn off playing those tracks live.

“You know it’s really weird dude, when I was in local bands I got sick of playing songs after like two weeks, and go and write some new stuff, but with these songs, just playing them every night hasn’t gotten old for me yet. Now that we’ve got kids singing the words back to me every night, it makes them even more fun.

The band is signed to Victory Records, and the label itself hasn’t been hidden from controversy in the past year. From the endless lawsuits and counter-lawsuits between the label and Hawthorne Heights, to Victory founder Tony Brummel receiving coverage for criticising Apple’s iTunes – stating that it ‘steals the soul of music’ it’s definitely been an eventful year for the company. So how do theAUDITION feel about the situations, and how are they being treated as a band?

“You know what man, Victory have been absolutely great for us. Regardless of those situations, they’ve pushed our band so well and just thrown so much money at us, I wouldn’t want to be signed to any other label. As much shit as you hear about them, they want their bands to do well. We have friends on other labels who are like ‘fuck, we don’t get anything done for us’, and that really sucks to hear bands talk like that. We’re very happy with Victory, and wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.”

If you’ve ever read the lyrics to the band’s track ‘La Rivalita’, you’d be forgiven for believing that the track is an obvious jibe at Fall Out Boy‘s success. Although the band have never commented on the subject matter of the track, they have stated before that the song is a sort of ‘fuck you’ to another Chicago band that blew up in lieu of them, and potentially taking some of the bands musical ideas. A few years down the line from writing the song, how bitter is Danny about the whole situation?

“The thing is man, it all happened a while ago with a band that won’t be named. When you’re writing songs, it’s all about the moment, that period of months or weeks or days that it’s in your head just because you’re inspired to write it. Shit blows over in time though. I’ve written songs about hating people who are now some close friends, so you need to look at it in that light.”

Clearly a band living in the moment them. With bitter song subjects behind them, and a fully-packed 2007 ahead, the band has very little down time at the minute. “Man we’re fucking busy. We’re doing this tour, then we head straight out in the states with Jack’s Mannequin and Head Automatica. After that we hit the studio to write and record a new album, then we’re back here for Give it a Name. After that we’ll be doing a headlining tour back home, then the Warped tour, and hopefully another tour back here before the year’s out.”

With that the band head out to grab food before the show begins. Birthday boy Seth makes us very aware that “there’ll be a few times during the show that we will not play until I have finished my drink – barring NOTHING”. Evidently the party had already begun for theAUDITION, and it doesn’t look to be stopping just yet.

Andy R

“It’s been really good fun so far. Even though a lot of people are definitely here for Biffy, a lot of the kids from the Aiden tour are coming back, and there’s definitely some faces I recognise. I think we’ve won some Biffy fans over too”.

Since their last jaunt around the UK supporting Aiden in late 2006, theAUDITION’s popularity has exploded at an alarming rate. With constant press coverage and now a slot on the Kerrang! Tour, things are definitely looking up for the Chicago fivesome. You’d imagine with a line-up of I am Ghost, The Bronx and Biffy themselves, there’d be some pretty heavy partying going on this time around.

“Actually, we haven’t been hitting it nearly as hard as last time. When we were with Aiden, we could go out, get fucked up and just pass out on the tourbus, but this time around we’re in a van so it’s not as easy.”

Since the release of their second full-length ‘Controversy loves company’ way back in 2005, theAUDITION have been touring constantly, mainly in the states, so you’d expect the magic to have worn off playing those tracks live.

“You know it’s really weird dude, when I was in local bands I got sick of playing songs after like two weeks, and go and write some new stuff, but with these songs, just playing them every night hasn’t gotten old for me yet. Now that we’ve got kids singing the words back to me every night, it makes them even more fun.

The band is signed to Victory Records, and the label itself hasn’t been hidden from controversy in the past year. From the endless lawsuits and counter-lawsuits between the label and Hawthorne Heights, to Victory founder Tony Brummel receiving coverage for criticising Apple’s iTunes – stating that it ‘steals the soul of music’ it’s definitely been an eventful year for the company. So how do theAUDITION feel about the situations, and how are they being treated as a band?

“You know what man, Victory have been absolutely great for us. Regardless of those situations, they’ve pushed our band so well and just thrown so much money at us, I wouldn’t want to be signed to any other label. As much shit as you hear about them, they want their bands to do well. We have friends on other labels who are like ‘fuck, we don’t get anything done for us’, and that really sucks to hear bands talk like that. We’re very happy with Victory, and wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.”

If you’ve ever read the lyrics to the band’s track ‘La Rivalita’, you’d be forgiven for believing that the track is an obvious jibe at Fall Out Boy‘s success. Although the band have never commented on the subject matter of the track, they have stated before that the song is a sort of ‘fuck you’ to another Chicago band that blew up in lieu of them, and potentially taking some of the bands musical ideas. A few years down the line from writing the song, how bitter is Danny about the whole situation?

“The thing is man, it all happened a while ago with a band that won’t be named. When you’re writing songs, it’s all about the moment, that period of months or weeks or days that it’s in your head just because you’re inspired to write it. Shit blows over in time though. I’ve written songs about hating people who are now some close friends, so you need to look at it in that light.”

Clearly a band living in the moment them. With bitter song subjects behind them, and a fully-packed 2007 ahead, the band has very little down time at the minute. “Man we’re fucking busy. We’re doing this tour, then we head straight out in the states with Jack’s Mannequin and Head Automatica. After that we hit the studio to write and record a new album, then we’re back here for Give it a Name. After that we’ll be doing a headlining tour back home, then the Warped tour, and hopefully another tour back here before the year’s out.”

With that the band head out to grab food before the show begins. Birthday boy Seth makes us very aware that “there’ll be a few times during the show that we will not play until I have finished my drink – barring NOTHING”. Evidently the party had already begun for theAUDITION, and it doesn’t look to be stopping just yet.

Andy R