LIVE REVIEW: Kingdom Of Giants @ Roadmender, Northampton

Teaming up for a co-headline run across the UK, KINGDOM OF GIANTS and OUR HOLLOW, OUR HOME are representing the modern age of metalcore. Hitting venues across towns and cities in the UK, we caught the show in Northampton to see how the bands fared on the live front.

The first band we caught from tonight’s show is Northampton locals CALIBURN, right from the get go there’s some definite sound issues impacting their set tonight, but it’s good to see they aren’t going to let this affect the amount of energy they put into their live show. Sadly though their high energy definitely doesn’t cover up how painfully generic their metalcore style of music is. Although their music is something we’ve all heard a million times before, a few people in the crowd seem to be loving watching CALIBURN tonight and definitely love supporting their local bands, something the band seem incredibly grateful for to say the least.

Rating: 4/10

Next up tonight is Essex’s own CREATE TO INSPIRE. CREATE TO INSPIRE have become well know for being one of the most consistent bands within their scene, constantly bringing brilliant emotion fuelled melodic hardcore, both on record and in their live shows and tonight is no different. Fortunately any technical issues from earlier in the night seem to have been resolved by now, meaning CREATE TO INSPIRE can fire through their set with no trouble and can deliver 30 minutes of passionate melodic hardcore like they always do. The entire crowd seems to be waking up a bit by the time CREATE TO INSPIRE take to the stage, definitely motivated by vocalist Sean Midson making his way into the crowd to get the room moving. The band keep things moving as their set absolutely flies by, they’ve definitely got this room prepared for the rest of the bands to come tonight.

Rating: 7/10

It’s clear within seconds of OUR HOLLOW OUR HOME‘s set that a rather large portion of this room are here for them tonight and the band are definitely fired up because of this. Every single one of OUR HOLLOW OUR HOME songs sounds absolutely huge, even in this tiny room. It is incredibly sad that we rarely see this band take to slightly bigger stages than this because they’d fit right in. The band have put their fair share time and passion into this scene and it’s unfortunate that they haven’t received quite the same back, though they definitely haven’t let this phase them. Everyone in the room seems to be loving OUR HOLLOW OUR HOME‘s set this evening and the crowd even ends up chanting for an encore at the end of the set, the band seem beyond grateful for this and in return play their cover of Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You. Metalcore covers of pop songs might be the biggest cliché in the book but no one in this room seems to care and it provides an extremely entertaining end to a great set.

Rating: 8/10

The final band tonight are KINGDOM OF GIANTS, who’ve come all the way from Northern California to headline this tour and they’re definitely going to make it one to remember. Despite being the headliners of this show, they probably are the band that most members of the crowd are least familiar with, a lot of bands would let this impact their set in quite a negative way, but not KINGDOM OF GIANTS. Vocalist Dana Willax spends almost the entire set amongst the crowd and getting everyone in the room involved. It’s hard not to get caught up and enjoy a set like this one, even if you are only hearing KINGDOM OF GIANTS music for the first time today. This type of energy and interaction is kept up by the whole band for the entirety of their set and it definitely transfers over to the crowd. KINGDOM OF GIANTS might not be the most original metalcore band to ever grace the scene but there’s no denying how impressive it is to see a band travel from America to a small UK town and get the kind of massively positive reaction that they achieved from the room tonight.

Rating: 7/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Northampton from Fran Dignon Visuals here: