LIVE REVIEW: Refused & Thrice @ Rock City, Nottingham

Tonight, the world famous Rock City venue in the English Midlands city of Nottingham plays host to an unlikely, but undeniably intriguing pair of bands. REFUSED and THRICE are acts that are both incredibly respected in their chosen areas, but are not a coupling that one would expect to see share a stage together. It goes without saying that the capacity crowd in one of the nation’s most revered venues are in store for a treat tonight.

The evening’s proceedings are opened by Floridian punks GOUGE AWAY who take to the stage in front of a mostly empty room. Their energetic, hard working performance does little in the early stages to whip the docile, seemingly uninterested crowd into life in the early part of their set. However, as the band really hit their rhythm and the room gradually fills, the band’s nostalgic, grunge influenced punk tracks begin to resonate more with the growing number of onlookers. The simple, heavily distorted guitars, hard hitting rhythmic sections and showmanship see the band win over the doubters as the set progresses with particular highlights coming when the band slow things down and give Christina Michelle a chance to showcase her breathy, Courtney Love-esque vocals in lieu of her usual banshee shout. GOUGE AWAY then close out their set by trashing their own instruments and collapsing on the stage, lost in a sea of distortion and applause. It could be argued that GOUGE AWAY may have wasted too much time finding their feet in their brief half an hour set and the overall sound appeared to be lost in such a large venue, but we are willing to bet that a band of this quality could be a real thing to behold in a smaller, club setting.

Rating: 6/10

By the time REFUSED hit the stage the venue is at capacity. From the moment the Swedish veterans hit the stage they do not bot let off the accelerator. Vocalist Dennis Lyxzén is an anomaly, he struts the stage like Mick Jagger in his prime and holds the crowd in the palm of his hand throughout the entirety of their performance. The band work their way through Rev1001 and Violent Reaction from their latest studio effort War Music before reaching in to their bag of tricks to drop Worm Of Senses/Faculties Of The Skull from the band’s 1999 genre defining classic album The Shape Of Punk To Come to mass hysteria from the audience. There is no denying that although the band’s later efforts are stellar in their own right, but when it comes to crowd involvement the tracks from that particular period are a cut above the rest.

Rather Be Dead is a real highlight in the set with Lyxzén climbing his way into the sea of bodies whilst his bandmates navigate their way through the complex hard hitting guitar riffs and awkward rhythmic sections. The set is a varied walk through the discography of a band that have never compromised and have constantly pushed the boundaries of what modern punk music should sound like. This is pushed home by the incomparable closing track New Noise which is a song that every self-respecting fan how heavy music should be familiar with. REFUSED have laid the gauntlet down to their touring counterparts in THRICE with a set that could very well steal the night.

Rating: 8/10

THRICE are not a band that have ever hidden behind fancy stage productions, lights or pyrotechnics. From the very formation of the band they have let their music do the talking and that is very much the case tonight as they open up their set with the track Only Us from last year’s album Palms, quickly followed by the stonewall classic Image Of The Invisible from the 2005 album Vhessu. The fact that these two songs flow together so well is a testament to the constantly high calibre of music that the band have out over their career.

The song The Arsonist is a welcome addition to the setlist and sounds as crushingly heavy as it did when it was first released. Dustin Kensrue is a supremely talented vocalist and this is put on full display throughout this, particularly in this instance. The boys are firing on all cylinders by the middle part of the set with the songs Hurricane, quickly followed by fan favourite The Artist In The Ambulance and slow burner Red Sky with the audience lapping up every chord and key change the band throws their way.

However, it is after this point that things start to take a different path. The band still roll out plenty of superb tracks such as Black Honey and the epic four and a half minute opus The Earth Will Shake that sound as good, if not better than they do on record. The surprises of the set comes from the inclusion of songs such as Doublespeak and The Window that seem to stunt the momentum of the performance at the point of the set where the band should be in fifth gear heading for home. The choice in the closing track is the strangest choice if them all, THRICE choose the song Beyond The Pines to see out the show. Now, it goes without saying that to most fans of the band that this is a beautifully chilling song and would sit perfectly elsewhere in the setlist, but it is by no means a song that should be used to end proceedings tonight, particularly when there is to be no encore. It sees the night ending in a whimper, rather than a tremendous blaze of glory.

Perhaps the issue is that when a band such as THRICE has such a vast back catalogue of superb songs that trying to condense it down into an hour long co-headlining set is just too much to ask. Tonight sees a superior performance from a world class band that is only slightly hindered by a bewildering choice of setlist.

Rating: 7/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Nottingham from Tasha Shipston here: