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 Tonight we headed down to the Academy in Bristol
to check out Rise Against on play the second show
of their sold out UK tour. We got down to Bristol
really early due to an commitment of interviewing
Rise Against early in the afternoon, after the interview
we had a walk around Bristol for a few hours which
was good as I have lived near Bristol all my life
but have never really had a look around the city,
we headed to a pub just over the road from The Academy
called The Hatchet Inn about 30 minutes before the
doors were due to open, the queue outside the venue
was massive going right up the road past the ice
rink and around the corner, it got to 7pm and the
door were open, we stayed in the pub watching the
queue of people fastly enter the building, after
about 15minutes the queue had gone and everyone
had entered the venue, it was certainly the fastest
I have ever seen a venue fill up, we then decided
to make our way into the venue.
When we got inside The Academy, it was the last
song of the Flobots set, and from what I heard
they seemed pretty good and looked very energetic,
they were so different from the other bands on
the bill tonight in the way that they were a hip-hop
band, what the connection that all three bands
on tonight’s bill had was the fact that
they all shared the same political beliefs and
all spoke about politics before, during and after
their sets.
 After the Flobots finished there was a 20minute
break whilst the stage was set up for Anti-Flag,
we took a bit of time to look at the merchandise
and grab a drink and before we knew it the lights
went down and Anti-Flag to the stage top perform
one of the most energetic sets I have seen a band
perform in a long time. Front man Justin Sane
looked like a cross between Pop Idol runner up
Darius and Chris Carrabba from Dashboard Confessional
tonight, and seemed to love every minute of the
show, talking to the crowd in between songs about
politics, Bush and everything else they like to
ram down our thoughts, but he preached in a fun
way. Chris#2 spent the majority of the sent jumping
and spinning around the stage whilst taking a
bit of time out to flip the bird at the photographers
and certain members of the crowd and in-between
songs he spoke a lot with the best bit about how
the government shouldn’t save the banks
but should help the homeless, teachers etc rather
than the corporate companies. Anti-Flag played
a top set with songs such as ‘War Sucks,
Lets Party’, ‘Turncoat’, ‘Good
N Ready’ ‘1 Trillion Dollars’
and even a awesome cover of ‘I Fought The
Law’, the crowd seemed to go mental from
the start to the finish of Anti-flags set with
the majority of the Academy singing along word
for word.
After Anti-flag finishes there was a 30minute break
whilst the stage got set up for Rise Against, when
waiting for a band to come on it starts feeling
like forever and then suddenly the time quickly
goes and the lights dim and the band take to the
stage and this was exactly what happened here, before
we knew it Rise Against were on stage.
Rise Against had their stage set out pretty well
they had three big podium style platforms on the
stage which front man Tim Mcllrath spent the majority
of the set on jumping from one to the other performing
in front of every area at the front of the stage,
which was actually a bonus to the people at the
back, as normally if you are at the back of the
Academy you can’t see anything as the venue
wasn’t made that well but luckily for people
tonight they could see Tim’s head moving
around the stage. Rise Against are a really energetic
band live, as said above Tim Mcllrath spent the
majority of the set on these podium type boxes
rocking out, guitarist Zack Blair spent a lot
of the set spinning around and moving around on
stage whilst knocking out rocking punk guitar
riffs, drummer Brandon Barnes was smacking the
shit out of his drum set like it was drumming
for his life, whilst Joe Principe seemed a bit
mellow on the right hand side of the stage but
he knocked out his baselines with perfection and
his backing vocals couldn’t of sounded better.
 The set Rise Against played was pretty spot on,
considering they haven’t long released a
new album they didn’t play to many new songs,
in fact they only played four songs from the new
album which in my mind was a right balance as
they have so many classic songs that really needed
to of been in the set and luckily they were. Songs
like ‘Anywhere But Here, ‘ Give It
All’ and ‘Paper Wings’ went
down really well and so did the current single
‘Audience Of One’ which seemed like
one of the biggest fan favourites tonight, but
then again it should do as it’s so damn
catchy and you can’t help but sing, jump
and go completely mental to the song ‘Prayer
Of The Refugee’ was also a big winner, the
song was one of the bands previous singles.
Songs from the new album also went down really
well with songs such as ‘Collapse’,
Re-Education (Through Labour)’ being played,
the set finished with a 5 song encore which featured
two acoustic tracks with one being the awesome
‘Swing Life away’ which features some
of the best lyrics Rise Against have ever played.
Overall tonight’s show was a treat to anyone
who likes punk rock as punk rock really came home
to Bristol tonight and in such a strong way, Anti-Flag
and Rise Against are both as good as each other
in my opinion, I slightly feel that Anti-Flag
should of been the headline band and that’s
mainly due to the raw energy and power they displayed
tonight through there set, I am pretty sure that
nobody went home disappointed tonight.
Rise Against 5/5
Anti-Flag 5/5
Review By Trigger
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Related Links |
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| Review
Score Code |
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- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
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What Was That? |
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