One thing about the Drive-Thru Records tour that I’ve found is that it never really disappoints. It always has two of the more established bands on the label (Allister & Hidden In Plain View) mixed with two of the label’s newer bands (Halifax & I Am The Avalanche) to showcase their new talent to the UK audience. These bands arrive at yet another sold out venue tonight so let’s see if the future of Drive-thru records is in safe hands with these bands.
I Am The Avalanche are the first band on and they sound really good and it is always hard as the first band to get people moving but they do manage to do that and put in a good set, not quite good enough to drag me away from the bar at this early stage but still a very good set. Halifax are next up and things are mixed up a bit because usual vocalist Mike Hunau is just playing guitar and not singing because he has a bad throat so vocal duties are taken over by guitarist Chris Brandt and also another guy, who I think was actually the bands merch guy, came up and helped out with some vocals. The band only manage to perform three songs but Mike Hunau did risk damaging his voice even further at the end by doing the singing for the band’s last song ‘Sydney’ which sounded really good.
Next up is Hidden In Plain View who obviously should have been headlining tonight as I think they were the band who the majority of the people are here to see tonight and they perform a great set. Everything about their set sounded amazing, Spencer Peterson on the drums sounded awesome, Joe Reo & Rob Freeman also sounded great on dual vocals. They are band that really knows how to put on a live show which they also proved on last years Drive-thru tour when they were the first band on and blow everyone else off the stage. The highlights from their set were ‘Bleed For You’, ‘Twenty Below’ and the awesome ‘Garden Statement’, which was my personal highlight of the night.
So now it’s time for tonight’s headliners Allister and you can’t help but feel a bit sorry for them as a large amount of the crowd has already disbanded after Hidden In Plain View played and Allister are now left with about two thirds of the crowd and they play really well. They put on a very energetic performance and get a lot of the crowd jumping along to their songs, ‘Flypaper’ was my personal favourite of the evening and a couple of the new songs sounded really good as well. With Allister’s new album ‘Before The Blackout’ due out in the summer it could be a make or break album for the band because the pop-punk bubble seems to have burst and I think a lot of bands are going to struggle to survive unless they really set themselves apart from the rest and I think that is something that Allister have still yet to do.
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