While She Sleeps/Cancer Bats

Joint headline tours are a funny thing. I mean, the principal isnt complicated; you get two bands of a similar stature, usually also similar in style, and you use their combined pulling-power to fill a venue that may not have been viable for either band on their own. They both share top billing on the posters; both have equal amounts of merch to shift, etc.

But, in practice, can you ever really have a joint-headline gig? After all, whichever way you slice it, someone has to go first. When Metallica and Guns n Roses co-headed a concert tour in the early 90s, a certain ginger-haired screamer insisted that GNR went last. When Queens of the Stone Age and NIN joint-headlined in 2013, they allegedly and rather more amicably flipped a coin for the top slot, so is it actually a bone of contention or just a reality of touring?

Well, there are pros and cons either way, but in this instance the two bands in question - While She Sleeps and Cancer Bats - have apparently decided to take it in turns, alternating every night. Which, y'know, seems very democratic and should keep inter-band relations on a happy note backstage. Good for them. Tonight, however, it was going to be the Cancer Bats who were headl..., sorry, on last. So, lets start with While She Sleeps then.

While She Sleeps are a British band that hail from Sheffield, which pleasantly surprised me for two reasons. Firstly, its always nice to have a bit of home-grown and secondly because when the singer talks, he sounds like Sean Bean. Unlike the ex-king-of-the-North however, these guys are far from headless, and despite screaming vocals and heavy guitars, there is a sense of measure and control behind it all. They were good, but the first half suffered from bad sound, and in the second half, the mic that the singer was using cut out during one song, revealing that they were using a vocal backing track. Now, that's not to say that anyone was miming, but to play to a backing tape means no freedom to riff outside the lines, and I like my rock n' roll a bit more organic than that. But these things are common these days, and if they hadn't have been caught out, I'm not sure it would have been an issue.

Then it was the turn of Cancer Bats to take the stage. The Canadian hardcore meisters have been on the scene long enough by now to know the rules, and from the first song they grabbed the audience by the metaphoical shirt and pushed them into the mosh-pit. They had none of the initial sound problems that WSS suffered from (pro's of going last?) but a slightly thinner crowd as a surprising amount of people left after WSS (con's...). I have to say, I don't know why. I thought Cancer Bats were the better act of the evening, but also that the two groups complimented each other perfectly. All the favourite tracks were thrown in, as well as a selection from their new album Searching for Zero. Frontman Liam Cormier was the consummate performer that he always is, and the energy coming off the stage was palpable.

All in all, it was a good night. The crowd really did get a two for one deal on headline standard performances, and even if some punters favoured one act more than the other, neither would have garnered the crowd they were playing to on their own.