Rock
Sound is a well known UK Music magazine that has
been around for years now, This years Rock Sound
Tour, named - 'The Imperial Exposure Tour' featured
the likes of up and coming bands that are destined
to do great things in the future. This years instalment
for the Rock Sound, imperial exposure tour included
- Palm Reader, The Color Morale, Chuck, no! Captain
Chuck and head liners We Came As Romans.
The
Tour its self consisted of 6 dates around England
at the end of February through to the beginning
of March, I chose to go to the O2 Academy 2 in
Birmingham to photograph this event which was
the 3rd date of the tour.
All the bands that joined this tour have kind
of the same Genre of music but also have different
qualities and have different techniques to wow
the crowd.
First
up was Palm Reader, a great young band from Woking,
Uk that formed only in 2011.
Unfortunately i got stuck in traffic on the way
to the O2 so i only managed to catch the last
half of their set but the half i saw definitely
impressed me. This band would definitely be one
to keep an eye on in the future and i'd love to
have the chance to photograph the band properly
at one of their own shows. Near the end of their
set the Bassist 'Josh Redrup' even jumped off
stage with his bass guitar to join the ever growing
crowd during their last song and then when the
song had finished his just dropped his bass on
the floor and left it in the crowd.
Next
up was a Post Hardcore band all the way from America
called The Color Morale, i actually really enjoyed
seeing his band live and had fun photographing
them as i think i got some pretty good photos
that night. The music and song they were playing
got the crowd going mental, during one of their
songs they even threw the mic into the crowd and
let their fans sing the rest of the song so they
felt more involved with and engaged with their
music.
The only down side was when lead singer 'Garret
Rapp' repeatedly mentioned about the band not
"Doing it for the money", I'm not a
big fan of bands when they say this kind of thing,
it seems too staged, like thats what they want
you to think but they might actually mean the
opposite and think they will gain more fans that
buy merch and pay to see them live to get money,
I'm sure they are genuine lads but you still never
know. Garret also says before the show young fans
came up to him with cuts on their arms telling
him and the band about their struggles in life
so dedicated a few songs to those. As much as
i enjoyed this band live i rate them 3/5 because
of the intermissions between songs, that was
the only down side to seeing them live but when
they are actually playing music they are really
good live and have catchy songs that make the
crowd go mad, they even made the crowd part in
the middle and made them do a wall of death whilst
recording on a hand held camera of some sort for
tour purposes.
As the main support band 'Chunk!s No, Captain
Chunk!' came on stage, the ever growing crowd
was getting bigger and bigger with every song
this band played. They also squeezed into their
set a cheeky cover of Ke$ha's 'We are who we are'.
Not sure if all the Hardcore fans in the crowd
liked it much but
i actually enjoyed it because i like a lot of
different genres of music. Considering this band
hails from Paris, France and they all have French
accents, they are doing well for them selves over
here in the UK as i can imagine its a big challenge
performing all your songs in a foreign language
but despite their broken English they are doing
very well for them selves and i really enjoyed
the song 'Pardon My French' which is also a great
pun because of where they are from, so when they
mentioned they were about to play it i saw a few
smiles in the crowd from fans.
Last
band to play the Rock Sound Imperial Exposure
Tour was none other than 'We Came As Romans' who
are also an American band from Michigan, Ive never
seen this band live before so i was anxious to
see what all the fuss was about and why they were
the headliners for this tour. I really like the
idea of bands that have two vocalists, one that
does all the screaming and the other that does
all the singing so i was in my element when i
realised they had both 'Dave Stephens' and 'Kyle
Pavone' on vocals in the band. The bands crowd
seemed to know every word of every song and went
crazy, rushing and fighting their way to the front
when Vocalist
'David Stephens' jumped off the stage to join
them during one of their songs and let fans sing
through his mic. All was going great until the
band decided to cover The Wanted's 'Glad you came'.
Admittedly the bands version was much more heavier
and slightly better that the original but still
not much more and i know i said previously that
i like different genres of music like Chunk No,
Captain Chunk!'s cover of Ke$ha but this song
was a real let down. After this embarrassing moment
the band attempted to win the crowd back over
with some of their classics like 'Views That Never
Cease' and so they do, ending the night on good
vibes and making everyone glad they stuck around
for the end.
Palm Reader 5/5
The Color Morale 3/5
Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! 5/5
We Came As Romans 4/5
Review By Jazza Wallace
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