It’s a hot day…wait, scratch that. It’s the hottest June day since records began. Where better to go to cool off than packing ourselves into a pit for The Only Band Ever? We’d get the Tube twice as far to catch Alexisonfire and Billy Talent’s UK album-in-full team up show, with the co-headliners each showcasing their biggest record. It’s the millennial dream lineup, but it’s also far more than that; an evening of revelation, proving that there’s hidden depths to our favourite bands and their records that we’d never even considered before.
None of the snap to ‘Devil In A Midnight Mass’ has diminished over time and the ability of Billy Talent to reel us in has only grown. While it’s been twenty years since the boys from Ontario dropped ‘II’, tonight is chock full of their trademark crispness that makes their sound inimitable. Somehow playing ‘II’ doesn’t feel like a nostalgia-fest or a game of tracklist bingo: songs like ‘Worker Bees’ are jet- propelled to new heights, fuelled by our singalong and stinging bass lines. Of course, ‘Fallen Leaves’ is pure uncorked lightning in a bottle, and three minutes of the sensation of a crowd and band pushing to their absolute maximum is an energy that can’t be matched.
However, as soon as it’s done, the vibe immediately changes like a flicked switch. “That Song” is over, and now they can concentrate on just being a really good rock band. “The theme of tonight is going to be gratitude,” declares Benjamin Kowalewicz, and the first crowdsurfer drifts slowly to the front as they open ‘Where Is The Line’. We see their scrappy past in the frontman’s every movement, but also the stardom that came after, every chord and stretch an autobiography poured into our favourite songs. There’s a deeper beauty buried beneath ’Surrender’, and a smile hits his face as he sees our loving reaction. The longing at the heart of ‘Navy Song’ sets off a pit full of people who are old enough know better than to slam with all their might, and as we slide into a slow burning headbang on ‘Rusted From The Rain’, we’re seeing Billy with new eyes. As they put it, tonight is “a bucket-list dream come true,” for them and us.
There’s no band that can clip in and out of focus like Alexisonfire. They’re the musical equivalent of a hypnic jerk, and the booming open to ‘Drunks, Lovers, Sinners, Saints’ is mentos dropped into Coke for us. ‘Mailbox Arson’ brings a rush to the centre of your mind before they weaponise feedback to bring in ‘Boiling Frogs’, a song which unifies our rush to the front that a single metal barrier barely feels like enough to control the flood. Vocalist George Pettit circling one finger above his head is enough cue to make the floor tremble under the great, earthmoving riffs of ‘We Are The Sound’.
“What a beautiful fuckin evening!” exclaims Wade Macneil, and it truly is. For the first time in over a decade we get to hear the thrashing sincerity of ‘Keep It On Wax’ and the live debut of ‘Thrones’, which flows so naturally into the ‘Crisis’ era that the setlist alone feels like artistry.
The way that ‘Rough Hands’ is reimagined live feels the arena with a velvet emptiness that the studio record was missing, and the entire song is a hammer blow to your emotional control, its layers of harmonies enough to shatter a frozen heart. Alexisonfire have grasped something intangible about the human condition and pressed it into industrial mysticism, and we’re hooked by their punk callouts as they close by chanting The Clash’s ‘Straight To Hell’ to close.
Album retrospective shows are always a risk. Is it just a chance for a fading star or two to make a couple of quid from nostalgic fans, or is it an opportunity to present a record in a new light and wipe off the dust accumulated over decades? Tonight is the latter. Not only did we get a unique double headliner, but also heard two seminal albums in a way that brings them to life in new and unforgettable forms. We’ve learned a lot about ourselves tonight, but far more about Billy Talent and Alexisonfire.
KATE ALLVEY
