Letlive. & Night Verses Live at Camden Electric Ballroom on 17th October 2013

In his Rocksins’ début review, we sent Southend’s finest Iain Willetts along to check out letlive. when they came to London a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what went down…

I had some very high expectations going into this gig, letlive. are constantly being mentioned as one of the top live bands of the moment and as I have not had the chance to see them before I was looking forward to checking it out for myself. The show was originally booked into the smaller Camden Underworld but later upgraded to the larger capacity Ballroom due to the unsurprising high demand for tickets.

Support was delivered by the up and coming Night Verses, a post hardcore band from across the US who were a suitable fit to support both in genre and performance. Night Verses have made a lot of progress in the last year with the release of their first album Lift Your Existence and I expect them to continue down that path. They performed well on the night with a good sound and energy but unfortunately the crowd seemed a bit timid when they were on, I expect this may be because everyone was restless in anticipation for the appearance of letlive., but even with that the crowd including myself liked the set and they will have definitely won over some new fans.

The night though was all about the headliners, you could sense the excitement from around the crowd immediately and it was legitimate excitement not from a crowd wanting to see the next big act but an audience of hardcore fans who know the ins and outs of the band and the songs, all of which adds to the occasion and atmosphere.

Having an audience with such high hopes for a show can sometimes lead to disappointment if a band is not able to deliver to those expectations, luckily though this is not the case with letlive. It was a trademark energetic show from the outset with Jason jumping straight into the crowd from the beginning of the set during ‘Banshee (Ghost Fame)’. Throughout the set there were the other scenes you would expect to see in a letlive. gig with partial destruction of kit, climbing on an amp stack and an emotional intro before ‘Muther’.

The set covered the majority of the band’s repertoire spreading out songs from The Blackest Beautiful and Fake History across it as well as a cheeky cover of Black Flag’s Fix Me to boot. The encore brought a great finish to the performance with the rattling combination of the start of Fake History with ‘Le Prologue’, ‘The Sick, Sick, 6.8 Billion’ and ‘Renegade 86’. The whole set went by in a blur of collectively crowd sung choruses and classic heavy breakdowns getting the fans blood pumping.

Overall it was a great performance and as with so many other reviews and from the words of countless fans out there, I recommend you go and see a letlive. show if you can. It will not be an experience you will quickly forget (9/10).

letlive. setlist from the Electric Ballroom:

Banshee (Ghost Fame)
H. Ledger
Dreamer’s Disease
Fix Me (Black Flag cover)
White America’s Beautiful Black Market
Enemigos/Enemies
Virgin Dirt
Empty Elvis
That Fear Fever
Younger
Pheromone Cvlt
27 Club
Muther
Day 54
=================================
Le Prologue
The Sick, Sick, 6.8 Billion
Renegade 86′