As if raising a giant middle finger to their older fans, Senses Fail’s relatively recent heavy-leanings surely played a part in this gig’s particular running order – no fewer than three support bands covering the diverse genres of hardcore, hardcore and more hardcore.
While modest in numbers, the gaggle of early-coming stage huggers were nevertheless excitedly greeted by the fresh faces of opening act Evercold. Though it’d be easy to allow the local quartet’s relative youth and brand new drummer to serve as ‘get out of jail free’ cards.
From the outset, it was never especially clear where one muddled song ended and the next started. While the melodic vocal parts were executed with skill, the vocalist’s ‘screams’ sounded like the effects of particularly throaty man flu.
The clangy, over-mixed snare drum evoked the horrors of Metallica’s St. Anger, which, along with frequently out-of-tune guitars, grated like sandpaper on a chalkboard. Messy, fumbling and unpolished, this showing puts the group at least a year’s worth of practice shy of the standard for this stage, even for an opening act.
Infinitely more refined were Perth-spawned, Melbourne-cultivated outfit Surrender. With an impressive arsenal of well-constructed tunes, the band looked composed and unintimidated, with frontman David Hickford confidently announcing their arrival before hurdling the crash barrier to start a one-man slam pit.
The vocals maintained optimal balance between melodic and deafening, while the mind-bogglingly tight instrumentation belied the fact their stand-in drummer had flown in from Sydney for tonight’s gig, having learnt the songs only hours earlier.
While sounding sharp and drilled, the gulf between Hickford’s energy levels and those of his too-often-static bandmates did leave things looking unbalanced and awkward. Aside from possessing an un-Google-able name, this was Surrender’s only major downfall. A few tweaks could see them promoted to main support next time the right overseas band is in town.
Main support Left For Wolves’s experience showed through a performance somehow equal in impeccable co-ordination and excited raucousness. The heaviest of the night’s acts, this boisterous fivesome headbanged, pogoed and roundhouse-air-kicked their way through 30 minutes or so of extremely ballsy metalcore, without missing a beat.
With a performance that was hard to fault, Left For Wolves left the ears ringing, the eyes stinging and the appetite whet for the main course to come.
After three supports-worth of the hard and the heavy, the sight of New Jersey’s Senses Fail taking the stage was a welcome one to those hankering for at least a splash of the more melodic. That excitement had to be temporarily shackled however, as three songs passed before the band reached for the upper gears.
While fans of the Drive-Thru/Victory Records-era pop punk were clearly catered for through songs like ‘Calling All Cars’, a clear divide emerged in the room when the band erupted into recent heavier offerings like Spanglish stomper ‘Mi Amor’.
Unperturbed, singer Buddy Nielsen was in typically talismanic form, wowing the crowd with every spin and thrust of the mic lead before regaling them between songs with amusing (albeit slightly predictable) tales about various foul-mouthed Australians he’s encountered.
There’s no mistaking Senses Fail’s stage presence, but at times, there is a slightly plastic quality to their live show – perhaps due to drummer Dan Trapp being Nielsen’s only remaining founding bandmate. It’s a concern apparently lost on most of the crowd though, who tag in and out of the mosh pit while the band tear through almost a decade’s worth of diverse material.
Aside from a couple of minor vocal issues which could be filed under “possibly the sound guy’s fault”, Senses Fail met, and at times exceeded expectations with the strut and bluster you’d expect from a band of their stature.
