'A'

“This is a, err, song about finding out, like, who you are…D’ya know what I mean?”

These are just a miniscule proportion of the words of Violent Delight’s skinnily charismatic rapper/screamer Rodney. The boy had spirit is all I can say. They are young. They are almost certainly a generic rap-metal band, in the blend of LostProphets, except they’re not quite as clean-cut, polished, squeaky clean and trendy as the next ‘Welsh’ thing. They whip it up. Luckily for us, they don’t whip it out, and the crowd goes as mental as I’ve ever seen for an opening support band. I imagine that they will get better with practise. I imagine they’ll do quite well for themselves in a couple of years. Watch out.

“Who’s got VD?” You probably will, soon.

What is it to have a band make your knees vibrate? Rival Schools. TURN THE BLOODY BASS DOWN!! Actually don’t…it feels quite nice. And it sounds damn fine. They came from America, complete with retro trailer-trash type merchandise. Nice. Tonight, they churned out almost the entirety of their classy album, 'United By Fate', and spoke to their, more than attentive, audience for about 4 seconds in total. Rival Schools made the most of their half hour. They could have tried to make it a Power Half Hour, but instead they went down the ‘let’s blow their heads off’ route and then proceed to jump around everywhere, amaze people with crafty drumming and carry on vibrating knees. My advice to you is to go get your knees vibrated. By Rival Schools that is.

“You’re about to rock…you just don’t know it yet!”

Yeah, Mr. Perry still has that knack of saying stuff onstage that make people laugh, without meaning to. But then he does _mean to do something and it all goes crazy. 'A' played ‘I Love Lake Tahoe_’ tonight. It was always their most popular song. They totally knew this and so got the crowd jumping around in a suitable fashion. Then they stopped the song.

“Y’know what I want all of you to do?” “Jump?” “YEAH!!”

And so everyone jumps. They pick up the song again. It feels like some sort of carnival. Carnivals are really nice; especially ones during the summer. Have you ever been to Brazil for the Mardi Gras? I haven’t. I bet it’s really good. But then so is this. The hairs on my neck were standing up on end, then my neck began standing up on end. I imagine I may have appeared to be some sort of hunchback. It’s just what 'A' do to me. Damn them. Pop-punk starlets morphed into crap-metal superstars? No. You’re wrong. Although the new song does sound like some dodgily-riffed metal non-masterpiece with Jason Perry’s cherubic chirruping sending arrows over the top of it. He just about makes it credible. Just. Luckily there was enough back-catalogue placed carefully around this absolute monster _of a track. Luckily, for you though, I was left dis-satisfied at the fact they could not accommodate ‘Summer On The Underground_’ in the hour-long set.

It hit 10:30pm. 'A' were halfway through what sounded like a storming Black Sabbath cover and the lights came on. They kept playing. ROCK!