As for the setlist ? Intro leading into All Downhill From Here kicked off the set closely followed by Listen To Your Friends. Favourite Understatement slipped nicely into Right Where We Left Off and the tempo was brought straight back up again by Something I Call Personality. Sincerely Me had the crowd singing louder than I?ve ever heard before at a NFG show and Hold My Hand, despite coming from a difficult album fits nicely into the live show. Truck Stop Blues, Truth Of My Youth, Sonny and the harder Dig My Own Grave follow in quick succession and Failures Not Flattering brings it all in before ?THIS ONES FOR THE OLD SCHOOL NEW FOUND GLORY FANS? Dressed To Kill injects another bout of energy into the audience. Don?t Let Her Pull You Down demonstrates the strength of the latest material and The Story So Far is an extra added bonus ? a track which rarely gets thrown in. Kiss Me and Hit Or Miss are the icing on the cake – /fun/ – it certainly is. This Disaster and Forget my Name make up the encore and OBVIOUSLY My Friends Over You closes the set. 21 tracks in ? no-one seems to really want to go home.

12 years down the line, 6 albums in, numerous UK tours and an aging fan-base — New Found Glory are still doing what they do best on stage. Jordan is singing more than he used to (fans will recall his mic-thrust-towards-crowd phase) and musically the band just could not get tighter. The fact of the matter is, NFG are a band who are not going to re-invent themselves, or their sound, because frankly ? they don?t need to. A steady progression has brought them to where they are today, and fun is the aim of the game. Forget Rock and Roll. It?s only pop punk – but I like it.

Gary

London’s seediest club venue is home to one hell of a pop-punk party tonight, roping in a crowd that ranges from 13 year old newbies to mid-thirties veteran Lagwagon fanatics. Before getting to see Joey Cape & friends play their first set in London for a while, there’s a substantial amount of musical torture to be endured.

Opening the evening are Stoke-on-Trent’s Friends of Ken. Make no mistake about it, this band are completely worthless. They play the most simplistic form of pop-punk imaginable, and hell do they play it badly. Between the drummer losing time at several points in the set, to their red-haired frontman struggling to find a melody, it really is a painful, and not to mention excessively long 30 minute set for several hundred Lagwagon fans to sit through.

Young Guns don’t manage to get things off to a better start either. Frontman Gustav appears to have modelled his stage choreography on that of The Academy Is..’s William Beckett, only he forgot that singing in tune is substantially more important than working up a sweat. It really is a shame, because I know how much fun these guys are on record, and to be completely unable to pull it off live is upsetting.

After far, far too long, Lagwagon hit the stage and save the evening from being a complete write-off. Joey & Co. still have what it take to win a crowd over, and it’s great to see guys in their late thirties still doing what they love, and still making it as fun as ever. Powering through a set of the best part of two dozen songs, they squeeze in tracks from the whole length of their career, with extra-special Kudos being awarded for brilliant renditions of ‘Bury the Hatchet’ and ‘Black Eyes‘. While they may have been taking some time off, and with no firm plans to make another album just yet, it’s reassuring to know that the old guys still do it best, and tonight is concrete evidence of that.

Andy

THE STEAL stepped up to the plate and proceeded to up the pace by a ridiculous factor. Playing melodic hardcore like Kid Dynamite if they’d been brought up just outside Zone 6, they bounded around the stage spitting out crunchy riffs and thudding beatdowns that all meshed together to create a thrilling live show. Rich Phoenix’s breathless drumming grabbed the crowd by the collective genitalia and refused to let up as proto-anthem after proto-anthem pummelled into the assembled crowd. What made them so exciting to watch was the perfect balance between melody and rhythm, galvanised by enough kinetic energy to tire out the most Ritalin-dependant of children. Blinder (8)

But when the mighty ADEQUATE SEVEN step onto a stage you can hear the gentle noise of the bar being raised. Settling quickly onto the large stage, something that they seem born to get used to, they ripped out a set full of as many old favourites (‘State We’re In’, ‘Gotta Stay Focused’ and a sublime ‘Free The Adequate Seven’) as new gems. ‘King Leopold’s Ghost’ and ‘Head Up High’ sound like they should be reverberating out of every sound system in the land and it appears that they have finally become comfortable mixing old and new without feeling beholden to their past. If anything is obvious while watching this band it’s that whatever they do, you can dance like a crazy loon to it ? if there’s any other way of measuring if music is worthwhile or not, I’m yet to find it (9).

THE KING BLUES are the revelation of the night. A languid mix of deep ska and Itch‘s characteristic rudeboy vocals, they made the whole of the now-massive crowd bob their heads and look around them to see where that weed smell’s coming from. Dropping in a modified version of ‘Guns of Brixton’ is a masterstroke, as it instantly locates them in the tradition of protest music, as songs railing against the BNP and fascism nail home. They’re clearly a band with something to say, and watching them entertain at the same time is a lesson to anyone that thinks that politics and punk shouldn’t be mixed. Maybe sandwiched between Ad7 and Lightyear isn’t the ideal spot for them but even in such adverse surroundings, they triumphed (8)

When you’re disappointed that Chas hasn’t already got his cock out by the time LIGHTYEAR launch into ‘Pack of Dogs’, it’s time to sit back and think about how much this band has been missed. Filling their set with glorious oldies like ‘Kid Dynamite‘ and ‘Oh No, Not Me Arteries’ (and a superbly messy ‘Spotcheck’, of course) and the more upbeat side of ‘Chris Gentleman’s…’ like ‘Data’s Double Chin’ and ‘Nuff Cuts’, the Derby mob showed that they’ve still got the essential mix of blind insanity, humour and simple, pure energy that has made them one of the most adored bands to have ever come out of this country. At times they looked slightly overwhelmed with the constant stream of adulation directed towards them but tonight was always going to be the party at the end of the world. ‘Positive Outlook’ was the mass sing-a-long that everyone craved and no one went home without a huge grin on their face. Yet another final London gig, yet another ache at the thought that we’ll never see another band like Lightyear again.

Due to a combination of having sod-all sleep the night before and falling asleep during the afternoon I only arrived at the Forum just in time to see Capdown. It