A DAY TO REMEMBER LIVE AT PORTSMOUTH PYRAMID CENTER

A Day To Remember
Portsmouth Pyramid Center
March 15th 2010
Support: Your Demise, Architects

The last time A Day To Remember played at the Portsmouth Pyramid Centre, it was to a crowd that belonged to Sheffield metallers Bring Me The Horizon. ADTR are a million miles away from that now as the popularity surrounding the band has more than exploded, causing many of the dates on the tour to sell out, leaving fans begging for spare tickets outside the venues.

By the time many of the fans had got into the venue, support act Your Demise were already making lots of noise while hurling themselves across the stage. Unfortunately on this night, bad sound quality and at time inaudible vocals meant that ADTR’s crowd were not so enthusiastic about this band and they barely moved through the entire set. It wasn’t through lack of trying on Your Demise’s part, but the crowd didn’t seem to get into it.

Brighton based metal act Architects managed to work the crowd up into a sweat as there seemed to be a good portion of the crowd out to support them. Small circle pits ensued and the flurry of audience members that didn’t know the band too well were won over by their solid, powerful performance.

After bursting into spontaneous chants from ‘The Downfall of us All’ while queuing outside the venue, it was clear what the fans expected the band to play first but ADTR surprised everyone by bursting onto the stage to the sounds of ‘Fast Forward to 2012.’

The band played a decent amount of tracks from their first two albums ‘And Their Name Was Treason’ and ‘For Those Who Have Heart,’ which much of the crowd was thrilled to hear. But it was tracks such as ‘My Life For Hire,’ and ‘Welcome To The Family,’ from the band’s most recent album ‘Homesick’ that really got the crowd singing along and going wild in the pits.

Slowing things down a little, the band unexpectedly performed their cover of The Fray’s ‘Over My Head,’ which features on the latest Punk Goes Pop 2 album. Singing like pros, the cover sounded as polished and well performed as it does on the CD.

After the initial burst of excitement, things wound down rather a lot within the crowd and their support for the band wavered after softer track ‘Have Faith In Me’ was met with an almost silent reaction from the crowd, causing the band to claim they have to perform softer songs “for the ladies.” The band themselves seemed to notice the quietness of the crowd and reacted to it with funny quips but as someone who was part of the audience, it felt extremely disrespectful to the band.

Thankfully though, things picked up again as the band performed huge favourites such as ‘Homesick’ and ‘You Should Have Killed Me When You Had The Chance,’ but it was the set’s encore that really injected the crowd with huge enthusiasm and energy as they had been waiting to hear the power filled ‘The Downfall Of Us All,’ since they began chanting it’s intro outside the venue. Surprisingly, ADTR opted to perform ‘The Plot To Bomb The Panhandle’ as their closing track of the night, proving that the band have made it big thanks to their entire discography and not solely on their latest release.


Review by Cherry Pullinger