First up was Architects, one of the few mathcore bands that I really appreciate and they were actually the reason I was here this afternoon. In 2006 I was impressed by their record Nightmares and I was surprised that I didn’t recognise all of their songs live. It turned out that I missed their last year released record Ruin, quite a bummer cause it was extremely hard to get into this songs live if you haven’t heard them yet. Songs which I did recognise like ‘To the Death’ were brilliant and were even faster played than on record. All the violence hurt a little girl in the front and the band stopped in the middle of a song, a real fucking let down. So a tip for the next mathcore show, be sure you know all the songs and fragile people: fucking don’t get in the danger area!

 

Only after like 45 minutes the next band could play because a radiator was broken down and the venue was partly flooded. Blessed By A Broken Heart was the designated band to get on track again. How fucking emo can a bandname get, but these guys gave the most surprising show of the day! They presented us with a real party where emo was melted together with eighties heavy metal, looks- and music wise. All this accompanied by a dominant keyboard. Their songs are extremely catchy and I just couldn’t get that big grin from my face because of this ridiculous mix; their entire appearance is brought with a big wink. This worked extremely well and these guys just really know how to make a party and entertain an audience, subliminal! The only big problem that once again a little girl was hurt and the band fucking stopped playing! Come on you pussies, girls can get hurt too if they choose to stand in front, what’s the fucking problem? Didn’t anybody hear the saying the show must go on?!

 

Then it was time for a somewhat more serious metalband: Maroon. Well I don’t know whether serious is the right word since I saw the frontman multiple times stripping at previous shows and there is a very short Sonic melody in ‘Reach the Sun’, but at least the sound of this band is way more serious and aggressive. Oh, and we were spared the striptease this time. Maroon gave a very decent show; it was tight, the sound was great and the frontman proved that he can also get a reaction from the crowd without having to get all his clothes off. However Maroon’s mix of metalcore, melodic death and thrash doesn’t really arouse me, there are too little real interesting and new things in their music.

 

I wonder whether all the young and emo fashioned kids that were here this day would come to a show of Bring Me the Horizon when these guys would be like thirtyfive years old and had big beards. Because the deathcore of Bring Me the Horizon doesn’t really relate to the whole emo scene, but I guess that the looks of this emo scene is expanding to other musical styles like deathcore. That’s a pity because although Bring Me the Horizon looks like a hip emo band they make pretty cool aggressive and mean deathcore. Think of the sound like All Shall Perish, but I believe that the young guys of Bring Me the Horizon are already huge in the UK. Count Your Blessings is a fine deathcore release, but especially live I felt that they fall too many times in metalcore clichés with too many breakdowns which are much alike. Besides that the singer lets too much air flow in the microphone to create the low grunts by which they sound too monotone, but I praise his evil, sharp screaming vocals, those are great! Overall they gave a decent show and they sure mad up their horrible show when they opened for Killswitch Engage, but this young band needs to get more original, because much in this metalcore and deathcore scene has already been done and it’s out of date in my view.