By Jase Walker
What else would a self-respecting, single, gig addicted man now living in a new country be doing on Valentine’s Day? Carting myself off to Haarlem to watch and write a bit about a rock show of course, as you do. I mean of course it seems like quite a few couples in the queue outside have had the same idea but gotta keep yourself sweet if you want to not let the crippling existential dread of being single on Valentine’s Day get to you, ahem.
For tonight’s show I’ve spotted the balcony open in Patronaat’s largest stage and I couldn’t resist getting myself a nice perch to view the show from and get some nice snaps too, hopefully! Along for the ride are fast rising pop punk act As December Falls and Self Deception who I’m not familiar with but a live show is always a good start for an introduction.
I appear to have made the mistake of placing myself directly on the horizontal line of some of the brightest lights which is a bit frustrating. Anyway, Self Deception have a pretty hyped up introduction before they hit the stage and they kick off sounding similar to newer Avenged Sevenfold, Asking Alexandria, YMAS and all that sort of heavy pop metal that’s been on the rise over the last few years. I can’t say I’m really into it but to give them a fair shake they’re sounding really solid, the stage performance is pretty great and the crowd’s getting into it as well. They have easily the most dapper looking bass player I’ve ever seen, they’ve even got LEDs around the body of the guitar in addition to the floaty cloak and leopard print shirts, what a look.
I do think it was a bit much that they tried really hard to act like they were the headline act even bringing their own smoke machines and giant balloons and doing the whole ‘phone lights’ thing and not really directing the audience to do anything with the main light show kicking in almost immediately after which seemed to confuse the crowd a lot. They even did a walk-off and back on for what felt like a mini-encore which I felt was pretty cringey along with their singer’s antics ending up with them dropping their mic onto an unfortunate person’s head as well.
Admittedly getting a song about Matthew McConaughey by the same name and actually having it sample his signature “alright alright alright” is pretty damn funny and although I’ve not really been a fan of their stuff, it’d be wrong to say a performance like this wasn’t memorable, silly and riffy.
Prior to As December Falls taking the stage, they treated the audience to a nice bassy play of Venga Boys, as is tradition. They kick things off and I cannot overstate this enough, they sound absolutely bloody massive. Absolutely booming through the floor and the balance of it all is stellar, every single part of the band is crystal clear, this is how you kick things off! It’s no secret I think highly of As December Falls’ live performances and this is no different, great fun, high energy and just an overall damn good time. The title track of their most recent album, ‘Join The Club’ goes down a real treat, the centre of the crowd already starting to open up for the more enthusiastic people to go a bit mental, this band’s wasting zero time in getting everyone on side and going mental.
As December Falls have a real slick style to their performance, there’s not much in the way of any stage gimmicks or the like, it’s just straight up brilliantly performed music with Beth doing a fantastic job of being the singer as well as the crowd conductor. Considering how the audience immediately follows along to even the slightest thing Beth does, clapping, arm-waving, etc, speaks volumes about how focused the crowd is on her and how much of a fantastic frontwoman she is. This is another one of those performances where serious kudos needs to be given to whoever is doing their sound and lighting as well, absolute bang-up job they’ve done with it all. This all ties together what is a magnificent performance from every moving part of this show, it’s no wonder they’re doing so bloody well when the calibre of show they put on time and time again is as outstanding as this.
After a break and an oddly late start, the stage goes dark and the crowd erupts into screaming as Normandie plays the intro before taking the stage. Opening with their massive single ‘Serotonin‘ is one way to absolutely blow the doors off the start of the set! The whole crowd is bursting at the seams with energy, the main floor is completely rammed and everyone looks to be trying to outdo each other when it comes to enjoying the music.
Admittedly I’m actually surprised how much of the words I know to their songs considering how terrible I am at learning the words to any song ever, ‘Holy Water’ in particular with its damn catchy chorus; that being said Normandie has a pretty big thing for a damn catchy choruses anyway so I guess that’s what they’re made for!
Much like As December Falls before them, Normandie are doing a fantastic job of orchestrating the audience participation as well as putting on a phenomenal show. This is one of those shows that’s going to stick with me for a while as an example of every single part of the show running like a well oiled machine, everyone behind the band is kicking arse and that leaves Normandie to focus purely on looking great on stage and enjoying what they’re doing. ‘Blood In The Water’ is another great example of Normandies writing having such a strong reaction in the chorus, even if the verses may not quite get the same level of people singing along, when it hits there’s barely a single person in the whole crowd that isn’t belting it out at the top of their lungs.
It’s great looking down to see just shy of the entire room jumping around to more or less every single song they’ve played tonight. Their singer barely has to try to get everyone to jump around, he does seem a bit more keen on having the audience dance over moshing but that’s not stopped a few pits opening up. One of the more unusual parts of this show is using an Instagram vote to change the set list a bit tonight, opting for ‘Renegade’ (not sure of the other option mind, I had no idea). This is also one of those times that I realize some gigs here in the Netherlands can run a fair bit later than in the ÜK, considering we’ve passed 22:30 and they’ve still got about half an hour to go, might need an extra espresso shot or two tomorrow morning. They’ve also done a vote for either ‘Collide’ or ‘Mission Control’ using the sound engineer’s decibel meter and ‘Collide’ won by one, I do like the analytical approach to an audience scream vote.
The mind-blowing energy of this show continues all the way through right to the end of the show (past 23:00 I might add) and the crowd shows barely any sign of getting tired, I don’t doubt they’d have it continue all the way to midnight if they could. This show really has been outstanding from Normandie, clearly seasoned veterans at this by now and yet it seems like they’re barely getting started. They’re no doubt going to be playing bigger and bigger venues very soon and a performance like this on Patronaat’s main stage backs it up. Watch this space because they’re going to explode with their latest album out in the wild now.
Late one tonight lads.
- Normandie play Manchester’s Academy 2 on 13 March and the Electric Ballroom in Camden on 14 March.
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