It is a Tuesday night in Sydney and SCENEzine is at the Hordern Pavilion as for it is time to stand the fuck up and charge the gates as one of my all-time favourite bands, Rise Against, are on tour in Australia. Yes, the politically-charged, Chicago, punk, four-piece have hit our shore’s for a mammoth five-show run in support of their eighth studio album Wolves, an album that took out 1st place on the coveted SCENEzine top ten albums of 2017. 

Opening things up on the tours East Coast only dates (Bris, Melb, Syd) are Melbourne punkers, Pagan. This four-piece are Triple J’s Unearthed winners and deliver a show opener of pure power punk rock n roll, with vicious swagger lead by the insatiable front women Nikki. This is a band on the rise with an absolute appetite for destruction, the best track on the night by far was the kick-ass sounding Imitate Me.

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Sydney’s Bare Bones may have been a late call-up to this tour but they really bring the noise, this 5-piece found their way into my personal top ten album list of 2017 with ‘Bad Habit’s’. They take to the stage unloading their furious fast sound of beating drums and huge guitar rhythms, tracks such as Thick as Thieves, White Knuckles Black Tar and Road Worrier are just a few examples of this in the set tonight. I know these guys have opened for some hard-core great names, but tonight up there on the Hordern stage these guys looked really at home. Expect more from these local lads in the future as for tonight they served up a slice of hard-core rock n roll that is not for the faint of heart. 

The howling of sirens and weaving search-lights lead us into the show, signifying things are going to kick off and kick off they do as the band all hit the stage. Frontman Tim McIlrath calls for us to raise our fists and we shout Rise! Rise! Rise! to the pounding war-like drum beat from Brandon Barnes leading us into the show opener Chamber the Cartridge.

The Hordern can often be criticised for its sound but tonight I couldn’t say that as Tim’s pitch-perfect vocals pierced the room on tracks such as Give It All, Re-Education Through Labour and The Violence. The new stuff fitting in so seemingly against the old stuff like it was part of their phenomenal catalogue all along, oh and guitarist Zach Blair let rip one hell of a solo during Pray of The Refugee. 

I have seen this band many times but something about tonight’s acoustic set of People Live Here, Hero of War and Swing Life Away completely moved me in a way I had never been moved before such is the power of live music. Of course, things won’t stay this calm for long, not at a Rise Against show, this is just merely “like the eye of a hurricane” as the band would come back out and hit us with a few more which included new track Wolves.

After what could only be described as an incredible set in which Rise Against showed us just how much passion they have for what they do with their relentless stage presence and motivational speeches, they left us, their fans, wanting the show to never end. But the time had come to finish the night off right with one last track and that track ever so fittingly was Saviour

There really is nothing left to say except tonight inside the walls of the Hordern we gave our all, fists raised high from the back to the front, drenched in sweat and now truly voiceless from screaming our lungs out. Somebody tell my work I won’t be in, I am off to Brisbane then New Zealand to see the rest of the tour! 

Review – Chad 

Photo Gallery – Christian Ross

Read our pre-tour interview with drummer Brandon Barnes –

http://www.scenezine.com.au/scenezine-talk-to-rise-against-drummer-brandon-barnes/

 

 

 

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