Back in the day, before I was familiar with the North Walian music scene, there used to be regular band nights put on at the Old Hall in Penrhyn Bay, usually featuring a few local bands and a slightly bigger one from further afoot. Well, it’s back for 2014 and hopefully this show will be the first of many to come!
The night began with Atlas Will Atone, who got things off to a really good start. In my last review of them from when they supported The Smoking Hearts in Chester, I mentioned that they were nothing special and somewhat generic, but since then they have really took things up a notch and the band gave a much more engaging performance – it’s always nice to be proved wrong about a negative opinion of a band! A particular highlight was their self-purported ‘heaviest’ song, which sounded like it was made to bang your head along to, and their set ended with a song entitled Morgan Freeman. Humourously, when the band reached the guitar solo in it, the guitarist was stopped and made to start again, before everything began to sound horribly out of tune. It was entertaining, to say the least, and as I am a person who would much rather see a fun performance than a perfect one, and they really delivered in that sense, who really cares about a few duff notes?
Up next was the ever-awesome Zebedy, who are always a band that puts on a great show and this was no exception. After opening with The Greatest Cause, singer/guitarist Jonny wound up going into the middle of the small crowd and up a ladder to fix the Go-Pro, much to the amusement of his bandmates who hurled up jokes as he proceeded – especially the longer it went on! It’s always fun to see banter between band members and even people in the crowd, so even if it was a slight technical difficulty, it did break the ice in the room and the atmosphere was awesome as a result.
It was then, however, back to business and they powered through a great set that included favourites such as Marionette, Stitches (the moment during the introduction where people were yelling to Tom about not being able to hear him sing was hilarious) and Empty Frames, before closing with They’ll Speak Of Us For Years, where the crowd was invited to get closer to the stage rather than remain scattered about the room. A fantastic set as always – Zebedy never disappoints.
Due to various setbacks in the past, this was actually my first Lantern show, and they absolutely delivered. It always helps when the crowd gets behind a band and everyone in the room was supportive from start to finish, with multiple mosh pits taking place as the set progressed! Frontman Daniel was a true performer and really fed off the crowd, he was like a constant ball of energy, and an amusing point was when he singled out members of the crowd (calling them names such as the Swedish guy and the Clutch guy) and asked them to move forwards! Although they’d apparently only had one practice before the gig, you could barely tell because it was a tight performance and the crowd really loved it, especially when everyone got involved with singing along during some of the latter songs. An all-round great set, and one they should be proud of.
Headlining the night was Inferno. At first, it did feel like they would have worked better as the main support band, because the crowd seemed like they’d used up all their energy during Lantern’s set and there wasn’t much movement at first, but after they’d played a few songs, everyone got a little more into the set and the room was buzzing as the set came to a close, which was great to see.
Things hit a high with the addition of a new song, where the band announced that they’d just finished mastering their new album. It sounded like it was on a whole other level to their older material on their Welcome To The Lion’s Den album and is hopefully a good inclination of things to come! And after closing with another new song, someone added one more song onto the setlist, so naturally Inferno obliged – on the condition that the room went crazy, and it most certainly did – even I got involved with a bit of dancing by the end!
A great ending to a great night. Hopefully this is a good inclination of things to come in the future!
8/10
Was a great night as was the birthday bash that preceded it. Hopefully more of these nights too come.