Rock Regeneration

Champions, Bournemouth

With only a few days to go until Christmas there was a very jovial atmosphere in Champions. The stage was decorated with festival tinsel and fairy lights to mark the occasion of Bournemouth band ‘Death of an Artist’ Christmas party. With top quality support bands billed the night promised to be something special.

The first of these ‘In Your Honour’ a local  hardcore/metal band from Bournemouth who are using this event to launch their first four track EP which is available free from their website. Lead singer ‘Pash’ does his best to get the audience away from the bar with loads of encouragement, their music does much of the talking with some impressive melodic epic guitar work along with periodic screamo style vocals. The five piece showcased some of their new tracks such as ‘In Your Arms’ and ‘Futures’ which seemed to impress the majority of the audience who patiently listened.

‘Anchors’ are a five piece band with unusually three members all called ‘Luke’, (Perhaps their parents were all Star Wars fans) along with Adam and Steve and they are also from Bournemouth. Their set was devoid of audience participation, everybody decided to just stand around ,watch and politely applaud at the end of each track. The hardcore Screamo vocals were delivered in such a way which make the lyrics virtually undecipherable, which gave an certain original mystery to each number. The band left the stage a little frustrated that they did not get a better reaction from tonight’s Christmas revellers.

‘Burn the Fleet’ are at the moment one of Southampton’s finest exports, a band  who are certainly destined for great things in the future. Kicking off with ‘Nautilus’ their sound made everybody look up and listen commanding immediate attention. Lead singer Andrew Convey’s powerful and well delivered inspirational vocals reach out to all corners of the venue. The large muscular drummer Dan hit his drums so hard that he infact broke his snare and had to borrow a spare from another band. The highlight of the set was the last song ‘Handfuls of Sand’  which is just an immense track that got much of the audience singing along to the duel sang vocals, it is a song that you only need to hear once and you will know the lyrics “I beat my hands against my chest and sing I’m alive’, this lyric repeated over and over around Champions as the band leave the stage with big victorious smiles on their faces loudly applauded by the impressed Bournemouth crowd. With the Christmas cheer starting to take effect the main attraction ‘Death of an Artist’ arrives on stage and gets an immediate reaction with virtually all of the crowd congregating around the stage,  some of the band are dressed in festive Santa Claus costumes with lead singer James sporting a nice knitted winter hat. The set was extremely energetic with lots of audience participation with vocalist James on a number on occasions giving the his microphone to various audience members who were able to sing the words perfectly without any encouragement with James actually jumping down off the stage to join the mosher’s in the pit for a short time. This five piece post hardcore act plays for 45 minutes, whipping up the crowd into chaos and excitement with songs like ‘Perfect Silence’ and ‘Only the Dead’.  All in all a great evening showcasing some great local talent and only £2 a ticket, you cannot complain at the value for money of that.

Videos
Death Of an Artist

Burn The Fleet

Anchors

In Your Honour

http://www.myspace.com/inyourhonourhc
http://www.myspace.com/anchorsbanduk
http://www.myspace.com/burnthefleetband
http://www.myspace.com/deathofanartistuk

Words and pictures by;
Dave Chinery(Chinners)

http://www.wohomusic.net
http://www.mudkiss.com
http://www.facebook.com/DAVIDCHINERY
http://www.youtube.com/user/CHINNERSROCKS141169