Review: Lostprophets

Monday 15th, 8.00 at The Corn Exchange.  

Monday night saw numerous people from Cambridgeshire descend upon the Corn Exchange to check out Lostprophets.  I fully expected the crowd to be mainly emo fringed teens in skinny black t-shirts and even skinner jeans.  It being half term though, there was a very varied demographic in crowd, ranging from 12 year olds asking my mate to buy drinks for them (of course he didn’t) to 40 somethings (who were possibly their parents).  Only in the Corn Exchange though do people manage sit throughout entire gig.  That still makes me laugh.

But anyways how were the bands.  Well openers We Are The Ocean were awful.  Yes I just disapproved of them.  Send complaints on postcard if you don’t agree with this.  It’s merely my honest opinion, and giving opinions is generally what reviewing is about. Sorry about that.  Anyway as I was saying We Are The Ocean were terrible.  They spent half an hour screaming so hard I’m surprised lead singer Dan Brown didn’t rip a vocal cord.  The crowd were suitably unimpressed. Next…

Kids in Glass Houses were a huge improvement.  Shame the crowd didn’t respond to them though, which I was surprised by considering that they are a Welsh emo band that sound a lot like Lostprophets.  Aled Phillips tried his hardest to get them involved, so much so bless him that I started to pity him.  Performances of Fisticuffs and Saturday matched the standard of the Lostprophets set.  When he sang Give Me What I Want, the crowd still did not meet his wishes.

Most importantly how were the headliners?  Well as per usual they were very good live, though their set order was slightly bizarre.  Traditional encore song Burn Burn, an absolute classic for the moshers, was played third in their set whilst album track If it wasn’t for hate opened the set to a slightly bemused crowd.  It is the opener of their latest album, but I would have preferred a more well known song to welcome them on stage.  The crowd was still as hoarse as before.  Ian Watkins noticed this: “you lot are like a panto.” At least the emos were angry though, and numerous circle pits formed after Burn Burn and reached their most violent in A Town Called Hypocrisy.  Their sound was more electronic than before.  At the start I thought they were trying to act like Prodigy, something confirmed when they smashed out a cover of Omen.  Other highlights included Last Train Home and Rooftops, where for the first time the crowd did scream its heart out.  Their last track, The Betrayed closer The Light That Burns Twice As Bright, was another odd choice – 4am forever would have been better.  Dstryr / Dstryr was the flaw in the set though – Losprophets you are better than Funeral For a Friend.  Stop trying to sound like them.  That aside though it was a set which mostly contained their new album as well as their classics, which is what I expected.