★★★☆☆

22nd April saw Of Mice and Men bring their Defy World tour to Glasgow as part of their European leg.

Opening the show were Sylar. A metalcore quintet from Queens, NYC. Lead by front man Jayden Panesso, they blew the early crowd away with their frantic, booming sound. Despite it being their debut gig in Scotland, their music seemed to go down well with the audience, performing numbers such as Me, Myself and I, Dark Daze and their very popular track Soul Addiction. There was certainly no shortage of energy as the band proceeded to dance and jump around. The majority of their songs were heavily lead by the drums and bass, the two locking in and creating some intense rhythms and a very powerful noise. It was often difficult, however, to actually understand the lyrics and at times hard to distinguish whether he was singing or just screaming down the microphone. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop people from dancing and head banging.

The second support of the night was Wage War, and with a large loyal fanbase of their own the crowd were chanting and screaming even before they stepped on stage. Their set included a mixture of songs form their debut album released in 2015, and their most recent record which was released just last year featuring tracks such as Twenty One,and their most recent music video Gravity, which went down a storm with the audience. Their set was very high paced. Stephen Klueseneron’s drums smashing it with some double bass pedal madness and Briton Bond’s insane voice giving some of the crowd a bit of a scare. At times there were some nice harmonies between lead guitarist’s Cody Quistad and Seth Blake before descending back into drum and bass carnage, sending the crowd into a frenzy. At one point Briton Bond got a circle pit going which saw the more hardcore fans launching their bodies at one another.

By the final set the crowd had started to grow, however, it still wasn’t as busy as I suspected, especially given the caliber of the headline act: Of Mice and Men. Nonetheless, what they lacked in numbers, they certainly made up for in enthusiasm. As the lights dimmed, people moved forward to the front of the stage and the chants began. “Here we, here we here fucking go” being echoed around the venue. Finally the band entered and cracked into their opening number, Defy, also the opening track on their new album. They proceeded to play a mixture of tracks from each of their albums. Numbers like Would You Still Be There and You Make Me Sick sent the crowd into monstrous mosh pits. Other tracks such as Unbreakable and Instincts proved very popular featuring some tasty guitar melodies from Philip Manansala and Alan Ashby. Despite this, the majority of their new material was overlooked by the crowd, many of the songs impossible to understand and unrecognisable. At times it just sounded like a wall of noise rather than music, which was a shame as it wasn’t a good representation of their most recent album.

Overall the gig was positive, each individual act delivering a great performance and certainly giving the crowd their money’s worth. Sylar and Wage War were great support acts and suited the gig really well. Of Mice and Men delivered a booming performance to round off the night. At times it was overpowering and the sheer volume of noise was borderline over the top, but if you’re a hardcore metal fan then that wouldn’t have been an issue.





Support Act 1: Sylar

Support Act 2: Wage War



Photos and Review: Hamish Hepburn

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