Touché Amoré, O2 Academy, Birmingham - review
Anyone who has seen The Wire may be under the impression that Angel Du$t's hometown of Baltimore is rife with gun-toting gangsters peddlin' Diamond-in-the-Raw on every corner.
Yet the band eschews hard nosed street brutality in favour of poppy, goodtime hardcore that would be a better fit for Miami's South Beach during Spring Break.
There was a buzz around the packed venue before tonight's performance, based on a combination of rave word-of-mouth reviews of AD's other shows on this six week European tour, and last year's breakthrough album Rock the F*ck on Forever.
The anticipation was not misplaced, as AD brought the party to Birmingham – no easy achievement on a Wednesday night in a venue that charges £5 a pint.
The wonderfully named Justice Tripp is hands down one of the most engaging singers in hardcore.
Baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, his gold central incisors glinting in the stage lights, Tripp bops and flexes his way around the stage like the result of a cloning experiment involving HR and Vanilla Ice.
Toxic Boombox, Upside Down, Stay and Rectify are greeted with an appropriately frenzied pit, while the band show their range with Bad Thing – which sounds like it could have been a bonus track on Pet Sounds.
After what feels like around 15 songs in no more than 25 minutes, AD are done, leaving the stage to wild cheers.
Next up it's headliners Touché Amoré, back in Birmingham for the first time since a 2012 show with Converge at the Academy 2.
They have grown inexorably since those days, moving from being labelled a promising screamo act to one of the most cherished post-hardcore bands around.
A large part of that reputation was forged by last year's Stage Four album, an astonishing piece of work that charts a period in the life of singer Jeremy Bolm after he had suffered deep personal tragedy.
It features lyrics dripping with anger, fear and finally hope, screamed out against a backdrop of the band's explosive melodic hardcore.
Such cathartic music is meant to be heard in a live setting, and it is clear we are in for a special night as soon as the first notes of set opener Flowers and You ring out.
Every word – and I mean EVERY word - is screamed back at Bolm by the audience.
It's something that continues throughout the set.
There are times during the brilliant Anyone/Anything from 2013's Is Survived By and the heartbreaking Displacement, when Bolm stops singing and appears to listen to the audience in a state of awe.
Drummer Elliott Babin is like poetry in motion and puts in an incredibly tight display. His efforts are all the more impressive for the fact that he gamely stepped in to perform a guitar/vocals solo set to open up the night after Departures pulled out due to illness.
The set featured tracks from all four of the band's full lengths, with the older tracks blending in perfectly with newer material like the standout Benediction.
Method Act from second album Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me was a real crowd pleaser, and it wasn't long before Bolm leapt from the stage to join his audience.
The one-song encore, Gravity Metaphorically, sees the singer belt out the lyric: "It was the first time in a long time that I felt alive."
After a whirlwind show that took emotional hardcore to its pinnacle, many in the crowd would undoubtedly agree.
