As Flaming Wrekage’s brutal fourth album tickles your earholes, you know this is something special. …
MOVEMENTS with Eat Your Heart Out, Ambleside and Tired Eyes
The Brightside, Brisbane
Friday 31 August, 2018
Walking into The Brightside there was an air of anticipation, the room was steadily beginning to fill, but you could tell from the buzz these were long time fans who have been patiently waiting for this tour to come around.
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Right on schedule, Brisbane locals TIRED EYES started their set, not messing around with pleasantries and launching into songs from their 2018 release In Denial, Force A Smile almost in full. The melodic and electronic feel from tracks like Dissonance gave an intimate, comfortable feel to the room. The band still offered energy in some heavy breakdowns, with the lead vocalist almost causing a spill with the keyboardist, drawing an audible gasp as his MacBook balanced precariously on the edge of the keyboard.
Through the popular combination of guttural vocals and spoken word, TIRED EYES drew the crowd in, leaving the air in the room hot and heavy. As the set ended, the room was left with the feeling that the night had well and truly begun, and it was going to be a heavy one in both breakdowns and emotions.
Tired Eyes // By Alex Nisiriou
Between sets, The Brightside did what it does best treating the crowd to a Trophy Eyes Chemical Miracle sing along, keeping the energy up in the short break. Before long, sound check was over and the unspoken sign that the set is starting soon helped fill the room again. Ambleside made their way on stage and kicked things off getting nice and close with some enthusiastic fans at the front.
Ambleside // By Alex Nisiriou
A much-needed breakdown midway through the set pushed the crowd over the line of lukewarm, and the band settled into a steady rhythm with the audience following suit. In a cute display of how repetitive the naming convention of bands and songs are in the genre, Ambleside dedicated their track Tired Eyes to tonight’s openers TIRED EYES. A juxtaposition of angelic clean vocals by guitarist Dean Lawrence and thrash metal breakdowns, had the entire room completely enthralled during Retrospect, this, coupled with the crowd singing the lyrics word for word, made the set a memorable experience for the Adelaide based 5-piece.
Ambleside // By Alex Nisiriou
With their contribution to Pop Goes Punk Vol. 7–a cover of Shape of You by Ed Sheeran reached over 1.3 million streams on Spotify, there was a fair amount of anticipation for Newcastle band Eat Your Heart Out. Opening the set with Rust off their 2017 EP Mind Games, the quintuplet showed they have a lot to prove, finishing the national tour in Brisbane only to follow it up with two BIGSOUND performances coming this week.
Eat Your Heart Out // By Alex Nisiriou
With incredibly strong and diverse vocals from frontwomen Caitlin Henry, the band showed versatility ranging between heavier tracks, and tracks that have light enough vocals and pop punk sounds that they could easily slip onto the mix of mainstream music. Moving away from the polished stage presence the band has, Caitlin opened up about the motivations behind the lyrics explaining that Drag Me Down is written about struggling with wanting to change yourself and being influenced by people who don’t matter. In a moment that should have been incredibly obvious to everyone in the room, Eat Your Heart Out still managed to pull a fast one on us all, bringing Patrick Miranda from Movements out to guest vocal the live version of Conscious–a track the bands collaborated on in early 2016.
Closing out a well put together set with a new track released earlier this year, if this show was anything to go off, it makes a lot of sense why the band was recently announced as a support for a huge 30+ date US tour with punk-band Real Friends, alongside Boston Manor and Grayscale.
Movements // By Alex Nisiriou
In a scene that could have been pulled out of The Office, between sets a young kid who couldn’t hold his liquor jumped on stage claiming he lost his fitbit and his Mum would kill him. The first of many random acts of kindness for the night, the remaining people in the pit got their phones out and attempted to help him find the lost fitness tracker … unfortunately the pit of The Brightside won this round and it was nowhere to be seen.
Movements // By Alex Nisiriou
Movements had an explosive and emotional start to their set playing Third Degree off their critically acclaimed 2017 album Feel Something. The room became a sweaty mess of humans forcing their way to the front of the pit, only to return a few verses later struggling for air. As they moved into Color Blind, 3 people launched themselves into the air, and managed to do a bang-up job of crowd surfing despite the fairly intense and tumultuous pit raging on underneath them. The emotions in the room were bubbling and there was a constant pressure song after song for that to increase.
Movements // By Alex Nisiriou
This is a band that truly rewards their fans for their efforts, constantly trying to match the energy of their fans, and encouraging them to go as hard as they possibly can. If you’ve ever been in the middle of a pit, you know the feelings of struggling to breathe, not feeling safe, and even coming close to passing out. Midway through Deadly Dull, this was the situation Movements was working with, and in what the crowd thought was a beautifully planned moment they continued the lyrics yelling “are you staying out of trouble? What’s the plan?” but before long the room grew heavy and it was clear something was wrong.
Movements // By Alex Nisiriou
A girl was removed, unconscious from the pit, and the band stopped the show until her friend had found her phone and belongings with the help of security and the crowd. The band was left visibly shaken and for a few moments seemed to discuss whether to continue on or not. After a brief intermission they eased back into the chorus and continued on where they left off in Deadly Dull without missing a beat. After the incident was over it was obvious the band couldn’t shake their discomfort and there was a level of unease in the room. Movements continued opening up their discography past 2017 and delving into the Outgrown Things EP including Nineteen, during which any momentum that had been lost was regained and the band had a new found comfort despite the events that transpired.
Movements // By Alex Nisiriou
Before properly closing out the set, the band touched on how much of a humbling experience the tour has been, Australia had been a distant dream for them for years, and they’d never expected it to happen. Exiting on Daylily the band sat back in content and let the room fill in most of the words, it was emotional, raw, intimate and live music doesn’t get much better than that.
