Live Review

Twin Atlantic – O2 Academy 2, Liverpool

• 28th Jan 2011

At first impression of seeing the bands poster, they were just a carbon copy of Kings Of Leon. A mature scruffy band but somehow the place was full of kids, and I mean school kids. There wasn’t much excitement in the venue though. They kicked off with a raw crunchy going into overdrive guitar. A no-nonsense heavy grunge sound slightly reminding me of Nirvana. Then a change of tact into clean guitar for the verses. The second track was more energetic. The clean –then-grungy guitar sounds contrasted each other but it was produced well and the sound worked. A blatant Foo Fighters influence here but with a fast almost rap-like delivery of lyrics.

You could tell the frontman only had an average voice at best. Nothing awful but nothing special neither. There was Linkin Park-esque heavy punctuation between the melodies here, but we’ve heard this many times before. Already Twin Atlantic were just like a thousand other similar genre bands. They don’t stand out and are certainly not original. However they are diverse in each track, which at least shows they have some imagination and some capabilities, but it means nothing if all the songs aren’t good.

The crowd were starting to lose interest; the singer was begging for responses quite desperately at times. They want to be the next Biffy Clyro, which was all too obvious, but I think they’ll fail to get anywhere near their standards. Each predictable tune became worse to bear than the previous one. Despite that, each style they chose, we had heard it all before.

One track looked promising with its anthemic start, but then Korn-esque trash guitar intervals again ruined what was good potential. This happened all too often all night.

The diversity continued with the introduction of a piano in one track and cello in another. They could create and perform great rock music of all genres if they wanted to but playing two or three types in any one song, including the now expected ‘thrash’, just shows they haven’t a clue what to do with each genre they want to recreate. They also experiment with the song construction at times but lose direction in this also.

The end didn’t come soon enough. They got heckled by one punter, which was harsh, but it just summed up a poor gig from an average band at best.