I’d never heard of Our Last Night until the night before this gig. I was offered the opportunity to get into this gig for free, so I went for it. I checked out some songs and thought they were okay, but I wasn’t exactly blown away, but I was by no means put off going. They’re very catchy and they’ve got some heaviness so could understand why people were into them, but at the end of the day, if they were going to impress me further this show had to be good and it was.
Opening tonight are Empires Fade, who get people jumping, helped by very muscular guitars and growled vocals. They’re nothing new, but will fix you just fine up if all you’re looking for something to mosh to. Next are Secrets who are not much different to be honest. They’re more melodic, but meaty breakdowns are still present. Frontman Aaron Melzer is quite energetic, constantly head banging or twirling etc.
Our Last Night maintain and build-up of momentum created by the previous bands, with frontman Trevor Wentworth having strong command over the audience from the get go, dominating the stage. Newbie, ‘Dark Storms’ gets a strong reaction, with its downtuned, movement inviting riffs getting a fair amount of movement, something that continues for many of the songs the rest of the night. They’re far from a unique or original band. Their formula of poppy rock music with some beefy guitars and screaming thrown in has been done many times before, but they do it incredibly well and you can’t help but feel there is a little bit more to them than that, something yet to be discovered. There are electronic elements to their sound, sophisticated peaceful beats that enrich their sound, not obvious dubstep drops like many bands in Our Last Night’s scene. This is demonstrated well on ‘Fate’, strong with hooks the crowd sing passionately along to and fairly heavy riffs to bounce around to, as well as well executed samples of strings that help elevate the quality of the song. ‘Age Of Ignorance’ is introduced with a sample of Howard Beale’s politically charged ‘mad as hell’ speech from the film ‘Network’, something that I wasn’t expecting and threw me off guard (always a good thing). That hints that the band have a political consciousness and the song’s lyrics confirm it. Something else that many of their contemporaries are without and something else that makes them that little bit more impressive to me.
They clearly have their own fans who are clearly loving the show, singing most words back, moshing and pogoing, but they throw in a rocking cover of Adele’s ‘Skyfall’ for the few (maybe only me) unfamiliar with the band. They close the main set with ‘I’ve Never Felt This Way’, but quickly return to for an encore to play ‘Elephants’, probably the heaviest song of the night with little clean vocals and much palm muted guitar chugging. It invokes the most crowd action of the night, getting some crowd surfing (no mean feat when the crowd begins and ends at the average length of a body).
So yeah, while I wasn’t amazed by this band’s music prior to this gig, but I really enjoyed the show. The band were lively and their songs conjured energy to those who knew them. If they were at a festival I was at or something, I’d see them again and if you’re a fan, I’m sure you’d love them live.
Rating 7/10.
maxcussons 