Arriving at the Pyramid Centre you could hear that Hatebreed had already taken to the stage with the rumbles of live music escaping into the car park, so a quick run up the steps in homage to Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Bilbao and it was clear once inside the venue that there were just as many people here for the support as the evenings headliners, with the room pretty much to full capacity.
I’ve often had concerns over the Pyramids, bands starting when there’s still a queue outside and the big open ceilings often results in the music being lost and you can feel removed from the performance on stage by its layout, but this is still Portsmouth’s middle sized venue and without it we wouldn’t have the opportunity to see bands such as Hatebreed and Volbeat on the same bill.
So although it was the early stage time that resulted in missing the start of Hatebreed’s set rather than any delay getting in, we actually couldn’t have timed it better, for it was to be “In Ashes They Shall Reap” that would be my first taste of the band live and a song that’s very much my go to when listening to Hatebreed at home.
The US hardcore/thrash act are pretty brutal and frontman Jamey Jasta gets the crowd going during the likes of “This is Now” and “Dead Man Breathing” whilst those down the front endure the pain of the most pit, even the lesser tracks in “As Diehard as they Come” and “Destroy Everything” with their simple lyrics insight a mass sing-a-long and those attending purely for the support certainly wouldn’t have gone home disappointed.
As the roadies warmed up the crowd by means of an impromptu jam rather than the standard testing of microphones and tuning of instruments, early indications were that Volbeat were going to be louder and heavier than I had anticipated. After all their home of Denmark has often produced bands that have influenced the death metal scene, but ultimately the headliners are more middle of the road country rock than satanic devil worshippers.
They do however pull out all the stops in terms of putting on a show even if the music is a little cheesy, frontman Michael Poulsen clearly loving the stage and you can’t help but smile when you hear a brief snippet of “Raining Blood” by Slayer on acoustic guitar.
Playing Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” as the intro to “Sad Mans Tongue” was another sure fire winner to have the crowd eating out the palm of their hands, but it was the recent addition of Rob Caggiano from Anthrax that added the musical quality with some great solos.
It was also a nice touch when Michael Poulsen crowd surfed over to a couple of kids in order to hand them each a Volbeat t-shirt for being the youngest members in the audience, although my personal highlight though came when Poulsen announced things were going to get heavy, and he wasn’t wrong as he went on to introduce Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway to the stage.
I had no idea that Barney had recorded vocals on the Beyond Hell/Above Heaven album as I had dismissed Volbeat as a poor man’s Metallica, so the collaboration came as a complete surprise and a track that was hard to follow… so how did they follow the live rendition of “Evelyn”?
Bizarrely they followed it with a rather unnecessary cover of Dusty Springfield’s “I Only Wanna be With You” which somehow seemed to work; at which point they could have ended on a high, but alas no, the rest of the main set was all much of a muchness and whilst Poulsen’s voice continued to hit every note there are times when a band need to realise that it’s best to quit whilst they’re ahead.
So with no more tricks up their sleeve the rest of the gig dragged on a little too much and it wasn’t until the encore with catchy “Still Counting” that Volbeat finally brought the night to a close, an evening where Hatebreed had been truly awesome and although Volbeat didn’t persuade me to go out and buy their records they were on the whole, far more entertaining live than I had been expecting.
