It’s always great to see a local band pack out a venue for their hometown show, or in As Sirens Fall’s case, their just a wee bit down the road from hometown show. It’s even better to see four local bands pack out a venue as we see an eclectic bill of Yorkshire bands play in Key Club in Leeds.
Starting off the night are Leeds based pop-punk three-piece Accident/Happy (5) who do a great job of getting the crowd on their feet from the get go. Whilst the music itself often feels a bit “pop-punk by numbers” at times, the band perform well and are able to build a good rapport with the already sizeable crowd. Taking things up a notch next are hard-rock/metal Yorkshire lads Deadlock Saints (7) who give a huge dose of adrenaline to the night and provide ballsy riffs for days with some powerful vocals to boot. Rounding things up before the main event of the evening are Rock Bottom Risers (6) who impress the crowd with their brand of classic blues rock.
Before they come on stage, it’s clear to see from the beginning that this is a big event for the Yorkshire lads. Balloons are scattered all around the room and you can really see that this is a celebration for the band, and there are a lot of people here to celebrate with them. There are countless As Sirens Fall (7) t-shirts, hoodies and patches dotted all around the venue and the room is more full than it has been for some fairly larger bands in the past. The lights go off and ‘Like Vultures’ from their EP ‘Where Lost Things Go’ released only the week prior begins. From the offset one thing that really sticks out is Mikey Lord’s incredibly powerful vocals, hitting high notes that don’t even sound humanly possible at times.
The EP has only been out for a week at this point but their fans already seem to know every word to every song and are doing their best to get the closest to stage to show it. In 8 years of going to gigs, this is the first time I’ve ever been muscled out of the front by people considerably smaller than myself. The fans are many and they are die-hard. The band carry on with more new material such as the lead single from the EP ‘Lily’ which echoes further the power in Mikey Lord’s voice and ‘She Runs With The Wolves’ which was the one that won me over as I’m a sucker for a good key-change and sees the whole band come together in a wonderful way. The band’s bassist Jason Doveston deserves a particular shoutout for tonight having played after just having surgery on his arm. Whilst he may have needed a stand-in later in the set, it was a seriously impressive thing to do.
The set begins to come to a close after having played some older material such as ‘Lonely Tomorrows’, the band have given a tremendous display tonight and it’s easy to see why they have such a dedicated fanbase. Everyone in the band seems so genuinely thankful to be there which is always a wonderful thing to see. They end on ‘Where You Are’ and are seen off with a rapturous applause from the crowd. No doubt we will be seeing As Sirens Fall sell out Key Club next time.
