The Amity Affliction, Chelsea Grin, Stick To Your Guns, In Hearts Wake @ The Palace Theatre, Melbourne (23/10/2013)
Back in 2009, a band called The Amity Affliction supported The Getaway Plan on their farewell tour.
At that time I had never heard of them. That show was at the Hi-Fi and after that day I became a huge fan. Here we are, just four short years later and those lads from Amity are now selling out the Palace Theatre, a venue about three times the size of the Hi-Fi.
The queue to get into the venue twists and turns around the back alleys around the Palace and the last of us in line manage to make it inside just as Byron Bay metalcore band In Hearts Wake hit the stage. The band work their way through their half hour set including tracks from their debut album Divination.
Vocalist Jake Taylor and bassist Kyle Erich even swap roles for Inertia, a very mellow track but definitely a nice little interlude from Taylor's screaming vocals.
Orange County hardcore band Stick To Your Guns take to the stage after a short change over. Midway through the band's set frontman Jesse Barnett discusses his battle with anger and how he wasn't happy with his life. A cheer rises up from the crowd however when he tells us that he has now turned his life around as they then launch into We Still Believe from their 2012 album Diamond. The Californian lads continue to play through songs from their four album back catalogue to disappointingly little crowd movement as much as Barnett tries to motivate them.
What better way to segue between Stick To Your Guns and deathcore band Chelsea Grin than for the sound guy to play some Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus (yes, I am being sarcastic but no, I am unfortunately not joking).
Chelsea Grin made their Australian debut for Soundwave Festival earlier this year and it seems they were quite popular as here they are, just eight months later, returning to the country. Their brand of death metal infused metalcore certainly isn't for everyone but young frontman Alex Koehler certainly knows how to work a crowd and the band's music is something that just has to be heard live, it's quite amazing. The band play through new songs and old with die hard fans lapping it all up.
The crowd were beginning to get restless after a forty minute wait without Amity Affliction hitting the stage but just seconds after they do all that is forgotten.
They kick things off with Greens Avenue from 2012's number one album Chasing Ghosts and also where the name of the tour, Brothers in Arms, comes from.
The Amity Affliction are a band that demand attention from the minute they hit the stage. From their music that you can't help but head bang along to to Joel Birch's screaming vocals and Ahren Stringer's clean vocals you can't look away for a second and the crowd go insane for each and every song. Fruity Lexia from their first album Severed Ties was certainly a highlight of the set for many long time fans as they haven't played anything from that album for some time. There was even a cover of Lana Del Rey's Born To Die for good measure.
After just an hour it is over with the crowd favourite Chasing Ghosts before an encore of Open Letter had everyone in the crowd singing along. With Birch stating that after Warped Tour in December the band would begin work on album number four, which means that this would be the band's last headline tour for “quite some time” there were a lot of disappointed, yet at the same time, happy people.
There is one thing that can be said for sure, not a single person walked out of the Palace Theatre feeling dissatisfied in the band's set after the monstrous performance that they put on and all of us fans keenly await what the band have in store for us next.
Matt Barton
At that time I had never heard of them. That show was at the Hi-Fi and after that day I became a huge fan. Here we are, just four short years later and those lads from Amity are now selling out the Palace Theatre, a venue about three times the size of the Hi-Fi.
The queue to get into the venue twists and turns around the back alleys around the Palace and the last of us in line manage to make it inside just as Byron Bay metalcore band In Hearts Wake hit the stage. The band work their way through their half hour set including tracks from their debut album Divination.
Vocalist Jake Taylor and bassist Kyle Erich even swap roles for Inertia, a very mellow track but definitely a nice little interlude from Taylor's screaming vocals.
Orange County hardcore band Stick To Your Guns take to the stage after a short change over. Midway through the band's set frontman Jesse Barnett discusses his battle with anger and how he wasn't happy with his life. A cheer rises up from the crowd however when he tells us that he has now turned his life around as they then launch into We Still Believe from their 2012 album Diamond. The Californian lads continue to play through songs from their four album back catalogue to disappointingly little crowd movement as much as Barnett tries to motivate them.
What better way to segue between Stick To Your Guns and deathcore band Chelsea Grin than for the sound guy to play some Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus (yes, I am being sarcastic but no, I am unfortunately not joking).
Chelsea Grin made their Australian debut for Soundwave Festival earlier this year and it seems they were quite popular as here they are, just eight months later, returning to the country. Their brand of death metal infused metalcore certainly isn't for everyone but young frontman Alex Koehler certainly knows how to work a crowd and the band's music is something that just has to be heard live, it's quite amazing. The band play through new songs and old with die hard fans lapping it all up.
The crowd were beginning to get restless after a forty minute wait without Amity Affliction hitting the stage but just seconds after they do all that is forgotten.
They kick things off with Greens Avenue from 2012's number one album Chasing Ghosts and also where the name of the tour, Brothers in Arms, comes from.
The Amity Affliction are a band that demand attention from the minute they hit the stage. From their music that you can't help but head bang along to to Joel Birch's screaming vocals and Ahren Stringer's clean vocals you can't look away for a second and the crowd go insane for each and every song. Fruity Lexia from their first album Severed Ties was certainly a highlight of the set for many long time fans as they haven't played anything from that album for some time. There was even a cover of Lana Del Rey's Born To Die for good measure.
After just an hour it is over with the crowd favourite Chasing Ghosts before an encore of Open Letter had everyone in the crowd singing along. With Birch stating that after Warped Tour in December the band would begin work on album number four, which means that this would be the band's last headline tour for “quite some time” there were a lot of disappointed, yet at the same time, happy people.
There is one thing that can be said for sure, not a single person walked out of the Palace Theatre feeling dissatisfied in the band's set after the monstrous performance that they put on and all of us fans keenly await what the band have in store for us next.
Matt Barton