ASKING ALEXANDRIA

ASKING ALEXANDRIA

If you don’t particularly love your music tainted with poppy hooks, overly anthemic synth and boys lunging around in skinny jeans and screaming, then after the onslaught of While She Sleeps, Of Mice And Men and Chelsea Grin, you might be lagging. I myself, am lagging. The full crowd in the Garage tonight are not as the previous bands have hyped them up for Asking Alexandria’s headline jaunt. Sweat is dripping from the roof, yeah, that’s right folks… even if you aren’t sweating, you sure as hell will be covered in everyone else’s by the end of your night. The girls crammed up against the barrier are screaming in anticipation of the 5 Asking Alexandria boys hitting the stage, the lights dim, the screams grow and 3 bodies burst onto the stage – only two of them aren’t even in the band. It’s crew, playing plastic guitars and milking the attention of the crowd as drummer James eagerly sits behind his kit. Then, after half an intro song passes, the real band members actually take to the stage. The pre-programmed track intro of ‘The Prophecy’ comes blasting through the PA, as Ben Bruce manages to whip the crowd into a frenzy of moving bodies and flailing claws. The real grinding parts of this song work so well live and get your head nodding along to the heavy bass dropping the beats. The tracks playing in the background are a little disappointing. Of course the band can’t play the synth parts live, but some of the vocals are on a backing track - how unfortunate - though Danny Worsnop’s more ‘guttural’ vocals and screams do seem to work pretty well live. ‘If You Can’t Ride Two Horses At Once…You Should Get Out The Circus’ allows the avid fans in the crowd tonight to really lose it, clambering over each other just to get a bit closer to the band. Danny walks from side to side along the somewhat small Garage stage as his band mates bound and leap at a great pace. Songs like ‘I Was Once, Possibly, Maybe, Perhaps, A Cowboy King’ and ‘A Single Moment Of Sincerity’ work really well live, the guitar work in these tracks is absolutely incredible and surprisingly technical for this style of music. The crowd are loving every minute of it, though the gig seems to be over rather quickly, with only a handful of songs being played - barely breaching a musical dozen, early curfew I suspect being to blame for this - but this fact doesn‘t seem to effect the fans tonight. The night ends with the inevitable song choice of ‘The Final Episode’. Danny leaves the well known chants of “Oh My God” to the crowd, who deafen everyone in the building with their response. I can see why this 5 piece are widely admired, especially their hysterical following in America (5 British accents, with their looks and appeal to a young ‘scene’ market - of course it’ll go down well). Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy listening to Asking Alexandria on CD, I think their music is definitely the best emerging from the scene. However, in a live setting I feel the use of backing tracks for the vocals and the somewhat cliché stage antics leave little to be desired and distract from how technically fantastic this band can be live.

DATE:

VENUE:

Thursday 5th May 2011

Garage in Glasgow, UK

Review & Photography by Siobhan Hogarty

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