By Jase Walker
In one of the biggest venue size jumps I’ve seen in a long time, Wage War previously played Rebellion at the start of 2020 and tonight are set to smash it at the Ritz! This is no small step-up for them and I’m super hyped to see them bang out a bunch of songs from their latest album, ‘Manic’. For this tour they’ve got a massive favourite of mine, Siamese, and fellow metalcore heavyweights The Devil Wears Prada. Tonight’s show is going to be full of more riffs than you could ever want to eat in one sitting!
Opening with ‘Heights Above’ and getting a pit going immediately after, Siamese kick off to a pretty massive crowd first thing, this is the right sort of crowd for a show like this! We are off to a fantastic start, as they immediately follow up with ‘Can’t Force The Love’, hell yeah!
Seeing Siamese go down so well as the first act really fills me with joy, they sound fantastic too and even their violin shines through brilliantly! I’m essentially going to chronicle every song they play here because Siamese don’t miss, especially not with ‘Holy’! Next is ‘Numb’ with its unmistakable opening riff that comes back even stronger for the pre-chorus, nevermind its euphoric chorus! Siamese are absolutely killing it, they’re feeding off the audience energy and delivering the goods here.
The beautiful ballad of ‘Sloboda’ with its wonderfully emotional opening sets the crowd into almost complete silence, a calm before the storm. ‘Home’ spurs the pit even more, growing wider and wider, those who know are chanting ‘Our, lives, burn, bright, be-fore, your, eyes!’ and that breakdown sees the pit get ever wilder! Finally ‘Ocean Bed’ sees out Siamese’s set, a definitive selection of their biggest bangers, a fantastic set from the Danes once again! I absolutely adore Siamese.
Next on tonight is The Devil Wears Prada. Admittedly I’m probably not as familiar with them as I am Siamese or Wage War but that doesn’t mean I’m not excited to see what they do! The pit’s already gone wild and pints are flying around within the first 30 seconds of them starting off, a solid start. No idea why the bass and snare drums are so bloody loud though, I can barely hear the rest of the kit. It’s quite off-putting because during heavy double-bass pedal parts, it just smothers almost everything else except maybe the vocals. It’s clearly not bothering the crowd too much as there’s a huge amount of movement and nobody jumping around in the pit has even stopped for a breather so far.
Unfortunately, regardless of the sound issues, The Devil Wears Prada are doing nothing for me. The songs are obviously resonating a lot with the core of people in the centre front of the venue but it’s just not catching my interest which is a bit disappointing. Will just chalk this one up to a miss for me.
Prior to Wage War taking stage, two flag stands are unfurled on either side of the stage, little doubt they’ve upped their game massively since their last outing here. Kicking off with ‘Relapse’ I don’t think they could have chosen a bigger riff to kick off with and the centre of the crowd immediately goes bloody mental! The drums are still way too bloody loud though which is a bit annoying, at least the guitars are a bit louder this time round. Announcing ‘Low’ the crowd screams in response and almost the entire front centre of the audience is one gigantic pit now, mental!
It’s been pretty entertaining seeing some very messy crowd surfing as well with people going arse over tit through the crowd or getting thrown at the security at the barrier. There’s been a pretty wide spread of stuff, old and new, but ‘Gravity’ sees the entire crowd, front to back, waving their arms around. It’s pretty striking to see how much of the audience knows so many of their songs so well, there’s a persistent chorus of the crowd singing the lyrics right back at Wage War. Another Manic banger ‘High Horse’ provokes the pit once again, spreading even further across the crowd, jumping up and down all the way back to the sound desk!
The title track of ‘Manic’ immediately gets people moving with just the intro, but the second that signature shout of ‘MANIC!’ hits, it’s a sea of movement right Infront of me, waves and waves of people smashing into each other! I mean people are losing their shit so hard, I saw a pint fly directly upwards from the pit and actually land on the flood lights hanging from the ceiling which is easily a good 30 feet up! Wage War have been relentless in their performance, keeping the energy going and I just can’t fathom where they or the lot that haven’t left the pit for the whole show are getting the energy from, it’s incredible. A favourite of mine from Pressure, the leading track, ‘Who I Am’ with its epic chorus and brutal breakdown and I think I’m gonna end up with a sore throat from singing tomorrow!
One song I’ve been waiting the whole show for, ‘Deathroll’ gets easily the biggest circle pit of the night and quickly devolves into people just kicking the shit out of each other, marvelous. Even the encore shows that everyone in the audience still has more left in the tank!
Other than the drums being a bit loud, I can’t really find any fault with this performance. The set’s been fantastically paced that’s kept the energy going for the whole show, they’ve absolutely killed it. Seeing how Wage War has been able to make such a massive jump and deliver the goods is incredible to see and that’s in spite of how things have been for the last two years has been nothing short of superb.
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