The musical Zeitgeist has a tendency to look down its nose at the nation’s youth. It’s a horrible sort of ageism, based on the archaic notion that just because they don’t have many years behind them, children cannot ‘appreciate’ music. Obviously, this is complete nonsense: it’s their passion that turns gigs such as tonight’s Blackout show into thrill rides of epic proportions.
While openers The Urgency offer a more refined live experience, mixing keyboard parts with choppy guitars in a sort of indie/emo crossover, the crowd still manages to get jumping. Hollywood Undead, meanwhile, are welcomed with a standing ovation, although it’s difficult to understand why. This is comic rap metal; the band members clearly don’t take themselves too seriously, jumping around onstage in Slipknot-esque masks, but the joke just isn’t funny. They resort to machismo and misogyny (‘Everywhere I Go’), profanity and homophobia (‘Undead’) in a cheap attempt to get laughs and it reeks of desperation. The masses may love them but Hollywood Undead are little more than a poor man’s Bloodhound Gang, and that really isn’t saying much.
All is forgiven, however, when Silverstein drag their carcasses onstage and proceed to tear through an all-too-brief but outlandishly shambolic set that takes in much from new album ‘A Shipwreck in the Sand’ and a few classics to boot. Shane stumbles around the stage, looking like he’s just been plucked out of the moshpit, while guitarists Neil and Josh flank him, casually indulging in the kind of extravagant riffery that sets the room alight. The pits are immense, the flow of crowdsurfers constant and the number of messed up, sweat-drenched faces uncountable. If there’s one area in which the band are lacking though, it’s their between-song banter, as Shane’s quip about Ice T falls very flat, the majority of the audience being too young to know who he is.
Thankfully, The Blackout have no such problems, as their cheap pops stick to the here and now. They praise the recently relegated Newcastle United, declare Gazza their favourite Geordie, and even when they launch into a pointless tirade about ‘shitty indie music’ and ‘those who waste their lives taking drugs’ (Pete Doherty, The Blackout are looking at you), the cheers are still loud enough to blow the roof off. The kids are in awe of these picture perfect Welshmen, and the band take every opportunity to exploit their devotion. The sex appeal is almost outlandish: singer Sean Smith pouts, preens and performs fellatio on his microphone, while his too-tight YS T-shirt rides up and exposes his midriff, making the girls, and the boys, wet with glee.
At times, the music threatens to play second fiddle to this excessive posturing, but they have enough tricks up their sleeves to carry it off. The performance itself is a bit of a clusterfuck, with singers bouncing off drum kits and microphones swinging around violently. The band infuse everything with over-the-top bluster, which works just as well for the slower songs (‘Top of the World’) as the angrier moments (‘Shut the Fuck Uppercut’). During ‘Save Our Selves’, Sean even gets everyone to sit on the floor and once the guitars kick in, jump in the air and “smash the room up.” He doesn’t really mean it, of course: it’s all part of the playful hyperbole of youth, the sort of thing that makes the adolescent experience so exciting.
This is music by the kids, for the kids, and if some of us have become too old to appreciate the genius of that, then maybe it’s about time we got the hell out of the moshpit. (7/10)
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