The first band to warm up the crowd on a cold Monday evening is Beach Weather, a new American band fronted by ex-A Rocket to the Moon singer Nick Santino. The band played songs from their debut album ‘What a Drag’ as well as an even newer, not yet recorded song. The men performed and interacted with each other like they had been a band together for years, even though they only formed last August. Santino’s vocals were clear and the band radiated energy to the public and received well-deserved feedback from the crowd.
Second up to entertain was California-based pop-punk duo This Wild Life. As the band is mostly known for its acoustic songs and performances all songs were played by singer Kevin Jordan on acoustic guitar and Anthony Del Grosso on both acoustic and electric guitar, and half a song on drums. The band received positive feedback from the crowd but, as they expected themselves, not everyone knew their original songs, so they sang their Spotify number 1, an acoustic cover of Bring Me The Horizon’s ‘Sleepwalking’, which got the whole venue to sing along.
For the third band up on stage, the concert in Bristol was the first of the tour. Entering the stage on Gwen Stefani’s ‘Hollaback Girl’, Brighton-based As It Is was welcomed with a lot of screaming and I-Love-You’s aimed at vocalist Patty Walters. The pop-rock quintet brought a high-energetic performance with the band members jumping up and down and Patty Walters creating lots of new dance moves, jumps and microphone tricks. Halfway through their performance the band performed 2 acoustic songs, including ‘My Oceans Were Lakes’ during which Walters told to crowd to ‘keep everybody save tonight, nobody gets hurt tonight, okay?’ after two concert-goers had to be taken to the medical stand. The calm didn’t last for long though, As It Is performed a few more songs to get the high energy back including songs of their debut album ‘Never Happy, Ever After’ which was noted by Rock Sound as ‘everything a modern pop-punk album should be’.
After another short wait it was finally time for the band that everyone came to see. One by one the members of Sleeping with Sirens entered the stage in order of the instruments heard in the first song they performed, Don’t Say Anything of their most recent album Madness. Third to come to stage was supposed to be bassist Justin Hills, but because of personal/family matters he couldn’t attend the tour and his bass duty was therefore fulfilled by Alex Howard. Last to enter the stage and thereby kicking off their set was vocalist Kellin Quinn. Quinn is mostly known for his impressive vocal range which he uses in most of their songs. The band performed a total of 13 songs, including high energy songs that got the whole crowd jumping and screaming to slow, almost acoustic songs that got the crowd to softly sing along and sway flashlights to create an intimate atmosphere. During the whole set the band performed with an exceptionally high level of energy and guitarist Nick Martin even left the stage during their last song to walk through the public and come halfway up the stairs to the balcony, much to the delight of the crowd. The last song, If You Can’t Hang, was also used by Kellin Quinn to shamelessly show off his voice, and he totally got away with it. Where the recorded version is supposed to end, Quinn added something extra by singing the same sentence multiple times but every time a tad bit higher, making the crowd build up a deafening applaud for the set to finish on.
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