When A Vacant Affair opened for the show, I thought to myself, would I stay this comfortable, clean and having enough space around me the whole time?
I thought wrong. The minute As I Lay Dying hit their first note… the whole crowd was pushing and moshing. Not in a bad way though! I was shoved, pushed, but enjoying every minute of it. The headbangers on stage never failed to keep close to the crowd, by talking to us, by allowing us to shake their hand. I was especially charmed by Nick Hipa, who was so smiley throughout the hard slashing on the guitar.The sound system could be better I must say, for there was massive feedback and I couldnt hear the vocals properly (it is not due to the makeshift earplug that I made with a piece of tissue).
The 30-minute performance witnessed an enthusiastic crowd. Whether true or false, frontman Tim Lambesis said, “This is our first time in SG but its certainly one of our most memorable gigs.” DXO was perhaps a good choice by LAMC then, as the turnout was just nice to fit a moshing crowd for the space of the club.
AILD played crowd favourites and songs from their next album. One that really got the crowd going was “94 hours”. The humble members of AILD (they did their own soundcheck) left to set the stage for Story of the Year. I thought people had left, since most of the crowd was here for AILD, but I was wrong.
SOTY came in with a cheesy “Fox”movie intro, but oh my gosh. They really had the crowd roused to the max. Starting with “And the Hero will drown” everyone started to warm up again. Well I did. I jumped and jumped and soon everyone around me was jumping too. Amidst my own mid-air reverie, I must have heard some one let a feeble “Swallow the knife” in a perfect Singlish accent.
What can I say? The mosh crowd was civil to body surfers, the band was so awesome. To my surprise, SOTY rocked harder than AILD because they were such crowd movers. They even teased the crowd by announcing that they would play “the best song they’ve ever written” and then rolled into a cover version of Guns & Roses’ Paradise City – Rihanna’s umbrella – ACDC’s back in black etc.It was all good fun. No, great fun.They didn’t disappoint the crowd – they played favourites from Page Avenue and a couple of songs from Black Swan.
Although I thought my nose broke when some bodysurfer landed on my face and thought i got a whiplash by a sudden assault from the back, this taste of chaos has left a surprisingly savoury aftertaste indeed.