Mayday Parade - Live Review

Mayday Parade, With Confidence and All Get Out @ Rock City, Nottingham - 18/09/17

September marks the official end of the festival season, but it isn’t all doom and gloom because September also marks the start of the touring season, where bands and HUSH return to the arenas and venues of the UK, and aren’t we excited! Tonight’s gig happens to be at one of Team HUSH’s favourite venues to visit, the legendary Rock City in the heart of Nottingham. The venue is also the location of Mayday Parade’s first show of their UK tour, a tour marking the 10th anniversary of the bands ‘A Lesson In Romantics’ album, and they decided to bring With Confidence and All Get Out along for the ride.

All Get Out weren’t just marking the first night of the UK tour, but also their first night touring outside of North America (USA and Canada). Thankfully it felt like some in the crowd had done their research, and the band were met with people singing along to their songs, which for a band walking out into such a highly regarded venue must have been a relief. All Get Out are driven by a style of vocals that seems to have a very country music based tone, which considering the bands Texan routes perhaps isn’t that surprising. The sound really works, somewhat reminiscent of HUSH favourites Can’t Swim, it is an inoffensive brand of rock that really works against a crowd that weren’t full metal heads but weren’t full emo kids either (despite the My Chemical Romance sing-a-longs between sets). 

Australia is a big place, but it is somewhere that for a local band can be very difficult to break out of, but for a band like With Confidence they could probably do it with their eyes closed. Not to try and dismiss the effort and hard work With Confidence have put in over the last couple of years, the band have certainly been grafting playing the last two Slam Dunk Festivals amongst other shows. 

With Confidence are one of the best bands out there at the moment. Their songs are audibly so catchy and dynamic, whilst the lyrics are so full of emotion and truth. They really seem to have struck a chord with the crowd, every song being a sing-a-long. This is a band that have that “it” factor, and there is no reason why given another two years they won’t be headlining this venue themselves, they clearly have the fan base needed and with a record label like Hopeless on their side, the world is their oyster. They are also really fucking good live!

The whole anniversary tour market is a little bit saturated at present, with every band and their mother doing a 10th, 20th or 25th anniversary tour of even the most insignificant album. Nobody wants to see Iron Maiden do a ‘Virtual XI’ tour, but ‘A Lesson In Romantics’ is an album that deserves to be in the limelight again, because it is the album that made the nights headliners Mayday Parade and although further albums have been more commercially successful it is a album that set the foundation for the career of Mayday. First night in, the band looked fresh, and seemd to be enjoying playing the album in full, there were yet no signs of fatigue or boredom which could possibly be to come, with playing the same album night after night, and it would be interesting to see the band at the end of this UK run. 

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