Atreyu start the evening with a total contradiction in terms, some clean melodic metalcore. Even so this is pretty outside my musical comfort zone and despite the band having been around for 25 years I am unfamiliar with their style & output. I miss the first song due to traffic so walk in during ‘Save Us’, which is a brutal slice of hardcore rock but with a catchy chorus. I also have some beard envy when I see the bass player! Much to my surprise I find the music to be good in an angry kind of way. The choruses are shoutalong rather than singalong, the singer actually joins the crowd in a rabid pit at one point and the energy in the room is palpable whilst these guys are on stage.

Latest realeased single ‘Drowning’ is fast and furious and stands out for me. The set is short but sweet, well no not sweet, more sweaty perhaps! At the end they tease us by starting a singalong version of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ but thankfully they are just joking and they finish with another brutal facemelter. I wasn’t expecting to, but I really liked them.  

Ukraine’s Jinjer on the other hand – well this is the 3rd time I’ve seen them in the last 2 years and I just don’t get it. They start tonight in a slow, atmospheric way but it’s not long until things are brutal and in-yer-face. Singer Tatiana growls and yells but then what's this? Oh, she sounds like Lady Gaga, what the hell happened there? The music is hard and fast and performed with note-perfect precision. Tatiana can sing clean as well as yell, and she has good stage presence too. The crowd are going insane, there’s a heaving circle pit and lots of raised fists and nodding heads. Yet again the drums seem to me to be over-miked and are overpowering the nuance of the music, I am wondering if that’s a “thing” in this genre? 

Despite or perhaps because of this they appear to be grabbing something primal in all of us and there are crowdsurfers galore. As the show goes on I realize that Jinjer are great at what they do (which is powerful metalcore with pointed lyrics) but they're not for me. I like the bits where it goes a bit reggae in places and there was a standout song called ‘Judgement (& Punishment)’ that I loved, but for the most part it just doesn't hold my attention. It’s well-performed, slick and professional but I find it emotionless and it just doesn’t speak to me.   

Bullet For My Valentine definitely speak to me though. They too have all the emotion and power. Although also classed as metalcore they bring melody and light to an often dark and sombre genre, and they are masters of the craft of call and response singing – firing lyrics back and to between the vocalist and bass player, sometimes cleanly and sometimes shouty. The drums are still too loud in the mix in my opinion but when but when lead singer Matt Tuck says jump you can bet your life that everyone in the room does indeed jump. There's lots of melody and even a couple of my beloved woah-woah choruses!

The set is eclectic, they have a back catalogue stretching back to 2004 and songs from all their albums were aired. A high spot for me was when they announced that they had done a poll to see what songs fans wanted to hear that they don’t normally play in the UK and the undisputed winner was ‘Hearts Burst Into Fire’ from the 2008 album “Scream Aim Fire”. Oh, only my favourite song of theirs, I may have bounced a bit at this point in the set!  The performance is slick and professional, and they have a light show that enhances the music and is actually part of the experience. All those years of playing arenas in the US have obviously paid off and the whole thing is put together beautifully and then held together by the quality of both the writing and the performance. The crowd is both ecstatic and enthusiastic, there are bodies flying everywhere and each song is greeted with a roar of approval that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.

This is a band who can sing about peace and love whilst the music punches you in the face, and they are bathing in the warm adulation of their crowd, their tribe. They effortlessly slip from fast-paced metal to soulful acoustic, and the moments with Matt singing on his own with just a guitar make me tingle. The crowd sing along to every word that comes from the stage, this is truly an immersive experience and I love it. 

Despite owning a couple of albums I’ve never seen Bullet For My Valentine live before, and I’m now kicking myself for what I have missed out on. I really didn’t know what to expect from them, but what I got was an outstanding performance that I could have carried on watching for hours. Yes I was outside my comfort zone tonight, but it seems that the edges of that zone may have shifted somewhat recently as I felt perfectly comfortable here.  

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!

Bullet For My Valentine, Jinjer, Atreyu