Skindred @ UEA
I see no good reason that tonight’s gig will ever be forgot
‘Remember, remember the fifth of November’, so sayeth the popular rhyme. Well, this year not only were the skies filled with fireworks, but UEA was filled with an excited crowd ready to “oooh” and “aaah” their way through the three acts on the bill.
First up were Californian G-punk rap-rockers (hed) PE, who despite having taken a bit of a back seat in the scene for the last few years (at least on this side of the pond anyway) haven’t lost any of their energy or edge. Singer Jared Gomes, by now the only surviving member of the original line up, brought the gunpowder as he body popped between rapping and screaming at the crowd, and certainly seemed as excited to be back in “Nor-witch”, as he was apparently surprised to have made it to “twenty-fucking-fifteen”. There were definitely a few old Heds there happy to see their return, but by the time they had won over any new fans, it was sadly time for them to finish.
Next up were Japanese techno-metallers Crossfaith. There were some murmurs of ‘treason’ through some of the crowd that they should have opened and made way for Hed Pe, but you can’t argue with the evidence, and an explosive set of slick if slightly over-produced dance metal evidenced why they were second on the line up. As a band, they may seem a bit ‘packaged’, but it’s a whole box of rising sun fun as they ripped through their set at breakneck speed, simultaneously making a gap in the genre and filling it, and infecting the crowd before finishing with a banger – their cover of the Prodigy’s Omen – that sent the crowd into a fusion frenzy.
Finally it was time for the rebel-rousing instigators of tonight’s metal-crossover revolution, Skindred. No strangers to UEA, frontman Benji wastes no time in revealing the plot to everyone, as they introduce songs from their new album Volume, alongside classics such as Rat Trap and Trouble. They even break out a bit of RATM in the middle of a couple of their tunes, and by the time they finish with Warning, the crowd are more than happy to be united in dirty-shirtlessness, as everyone whips off their T-shirts and whirls them around their heads for the now-infamous 'Newport helicopter'. The new tunes that they debuted fit well into a nicely paced set of crowd pleasers from the other albums, but the sound is slightly off through no fault of the band; it sounds good, but not great. Once again it is Benji’s charisma that elevates the entire affair, and his message of peace, love and metal-community that sends everyone home smiling and sweaty.
We definitely saw some fireworks, and I see no good reason that tonight’s gig will ever be forgot, but also sadly, like Guy Fawkes before them, this time they just failed to blow the roof off. Just.
7/10
