Written by Alison Aird
Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
Bring Me The Horizon, A Day To Remember & August Burns Red: Portsmouth Pyramids Centre, 19th November 2009
I’m a late comer to Bring Me The Horizon. Late as in, appallingly late, not fashionably. I only started listening to them in July of this year after boycotting them for no real reason save the negative publicity they received from many, and the fact I thought Oli Sykes was a daft tart for having so many tattoos so young.
Having actually listened to Suicide Season, I took everything I ever said against them back (particularly the tattoo comment, I am definitely a bit of a hypocrite on that front). The album blew my mind into the windscreen of my car when I first heard it. Subsequently some of the epic riffs on several of their older and new tracks bring an actual tear to my eye if I listen to them when particularly fragile on a Saturday morning. However, as converted I was I remained tentative about seeing them live. Would there be an average age of 16? Would they all be female? Would there be enough liquid eyeliner & hairdye to paint the moon black?
Fortunately enough in Portsmouth, there wasn’t. Or at least I steered clear of the front of the queue and the venue for the entire evening to avoid such sights. If anything, there were a lot of mid twenties there. A lot of guys. What I would have hoped and expected from a BMTH show, rather than a savage crush of teenage girls going spare over some great hair on some skinny dude from Sheffield.
The show openers August Burns Red set the tone for the rest of the night very early on. If you weren’t going to move, get a bit rowdy and maybe smack your best friend in the face for giggles, this wasn’t the place to be. August Burns Red have always impressed me, but their live show was something to behold. Before every awe inspiring breakdown they would hit this particular note that would actually send the venue and your skull vibrating. I love that, I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t – including my course mate, who used this show as a case study for her research project on crowd behaviour, needless to say she now loves hardcore shows. They played such a solid set that you could guarantee a good time if you saw them opening, headlining, playing festivals, whatever. Go and see August Burns Red if you want a good time, they will definitely provide it.
Next up was A Day To Remember. A german buddy of mine, having seen this tour a few weeks earlier, said that vocalist Jeremy McKinnon was a bit ropey. Well he managed to pull it out the bag at this show, and the audience was actually lapping it up. I have never in my life seen so many dudes bro-ing out to a band. They loved it, the pit was huge and the singalongs were so precise McKinnon could probably have not sang for the whole set. As a testament to their set, some of the audience actually left. Obviously A Day To Remember’s headline tour of the UK in March is going to be quite something to behold.
Finally headliners Bring Me The Horizon took to the stage, opening with Chelsea Smile. I was pretty much gone from them onwards, spending the entire show as one of four girls in the most intense pit I have been part of in 4 years. The band’s set was fantastic, mixing old tracks with new and even featuring some of the new cut up album snippets in as well. Their performance was tight and vocalist Sykes was so communicative with the crowd throughout that it made the show feel dramatically smaller than it actually was. As a live band, BMTH have to actually be one of my favourites and I am slightly devastated that this was my last opportunity to see them before a 7 month hiatus to write and record a new record.
That aside, I would strongly recommend that next time BMTH tour your town, you go and you see it. If you’re a fan of the music, but not the majority of the fanbase, then their live shows is the environment that separates the fans into the younger girls screaming up front, and the music fans further back. At no point do you come into conflict and you can both enjoy a great live show from one of the most successful UK bands around right now.
