Over the last three and half years, I have been going to see live, local bands and reporting on them for Project Metal Music. One of those bands is The Suspect Device. I first came across the band, it was back in 2016, when the guitarist Guy Clarke got in contact with me to see if I was interested in going to see them live, funnily enough it was The Wheat Sheaf in Sunderland. In the last three years, I have seen the band on several occasions in and around the Sunderland area.

Well, after a several month hiatus from going to gigs, I got an notification through Facebook that the band was playing The Wheat Sheaf, I was thinking, OK, I haven’t been to a gig for months and I haven’t seen these guys for a while. So I decided, right I’m going to see them.

When I got to The Wheat Sheaf, I wanted to see what they sound like after so long, and at the end of last year, their drummer Alun left and was replaced with a new drummer called Kevin, so I wanted to how the new drummer and the overall sound of the band sounded with the new drummer.

Just after 9pm the band came on and started their set, and over the course of the first few songs, I could tell that Kevin fitted in well with the band and brought something new to the band, don’t get me wrong, Alun was really good, but Kevin is slightly better, I don’t know if he has a different playing style, I don’t know.

Throughout the set, they played songs from such bands as Sham 69, Sex Pistols, Angelic Upstarts, Cockney Sparrow, Killing Joke, The Ramones, and many more. Over the course of the night the beers were flowing, and the assemble crowd were really started to enjoy themselves, and started singing along to the songs and even dancing. near the end of the night some of the crowd got up on stage, and the band was fine with this, and took over singing duties from Graham and Guy, and some of the crowd got up on stage and started dancing, with all this, it reminded me of the seventies punk era, when people used to do it.

On the whole, if you went to some of the bigger gigs and festivals, you are hard pushed to even get anyway near the stage, let alone get up on it and start singing and dancing with the band. This is why I am really liking the smaller venues, where the bands are happy with the crowd interaction.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the band, the gig and the venue. So if you ever have the chance to go and see The Suspect Device, go see them. You can find The Suspect Device on Facebook, and you find out where they playing next on there.

Project Metal Music