LIVE REVIEW: Three Days Grace @ The Ritz Manchester

There are some bands within the sphere of rock music that can represent for some people a general overview of an entire scene, style or time period. If you were to tune into a US rock radio station in the mid 2000s, then it’s more than likely you’d be familiar with Canadian outfit THREE DAYS GRACE, who exploded onto the scene some 15 years ago with hit singles like Just Like You and I Hate Everything About You, and would quickly become staples of the airwaves for a good few years. Now back in the UK touring in support of their sixth album (and second to feature vocalist Matt Walst), this year’s Outsider, we caught up with the tour on its final night on these shores, at The Ritz in Manchester to see how they’d fare.

Up first tonight are BAD WOLVES – a band who are arguably one of the most-hyped up-and-coming acts to emerge within the metal scene for quite a while, and one whom a large proportion of the audience tonight seem to have specifically come to see, given that these shows are their first ever in the UK. Opening strong with the ferocious musical-punch-in-the-face of Officer Down, the LA-based collective are clearly out for blood from the off.  Given that frontman Tommy Vext was the man drafted in to temporarily front FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH (and that their guitarist Zoltan Bathory now manages the band), it’s unsurprising that there’s a lot of similarities to draw between the two bands, especially when the likes of No Masters could almost pass for being FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH cuts. Remember When, meanwhile, sees BAD WOLVES going full-on Howard Jones-era KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, dishing out an utterly earth-shaking chorus that the capacity crowd seem to pick up within moments. All throughout their all too brief set, the band themselves are clearly loving every moment, and with tracks as fun as the SYSTEM OF A DOWN-meets-MUDVAYNE stomp of Better The Devil, it’s easy to see why, as several hundred audience members proceed to mosh themselves silly in unison. Of course, the crowning moment for BAD WOLVES tonight comes with a moment they were always going to save for last though. Much has already been made of the tragic circumstances surrounding the band’s cover of THE CRANBERRIES’ hit ballad Zombie, but hearing it live tonight elevates the rendition to an utterly transcendent level of quality, with Vext’s vocal performance being so heart-wrenchingly emotional, that by the song’s end, he appears to be verging on tears. It’s an astonishingly hard-hitting finish of an entirely different kind to what mostly preceded it, and one that caps off a set more than proving the chops of BAD WOLVES.

Rating: 8/10

Topping such an impactful opening set would be a difficult ask for a lot of bands, and unfortunately tonight THREE DAYS GRACE don’t come anywhere near that benchmark. From the very beginning, the Canadian quartet are stricken with a deeply muddied sound mix from the PA; immediately causing Matt Walst‘ vocals on opener The Mountain to be buried deep within an almost-impenetrable sea of distortion and overly-enthusiastic vocal effects. This doesn’t ever seem to really cease either, and the band’s 16 track run-through of what ends up amounting to a whistlestop tour of most of their back catalogue quickly goes from disappointing to outright boring before even hitting the midpoint. Songs like The Good Life and Pain seem to drag far more than they probably should thanks to bad sound, and the band’s decision to throw in a cover of You Don’t Get Me High Anymore by electro-rock duo PHANTOGRAM feels like little more than a time-filler.

Easily the dreariest moment however, comes when THREE DAYS GRACE decide to strip things back mid-set for acoustic renditions of Love Me or Leave Me and Get Out Alive. Whilst taking away their wall of sound does undoubtedly make things less muddy for this period, it unfortunately also serves to highlight the relative weakness of Walst‘ vocals tonight too, and the result is an underwhelming pair of overtly cheesy ballads, the latter of which sounding far worse than the original version with the band’s previous vocalist. Eventually plugging back in, the band then return to business as usual to finish things off, which again sadly means the return of the previous sound issues. Generally fun songs like the aforementioned I Hate Everything About You and Animal I Have Become find themselves almost totally lost to the abyss. Closing off with more fan-favourites in the form of Never Too Late and Riot prove final opportunities for the die-hards in the audience to enjoy themselves, but there’s really no denying just how much of a sub-par performance THREE DAYS GRACE have exhibited tonight, and we can only hope this is an example of an off-night, rather than of what’s to come from here on out.

Rating: 5/10

Check out our photo gallery from the night’s action in Manchester from Christopher Ryan Photography here: