Where is your Fall Out Boy tonight? Well, they are at Qudos Bank Arena Sydney. Yes, those Multi-platinum Grammy-nominated rock superstars have returned to Australia for four mammoth shows and tonight Sydney will bear witness to one of rock music’s biggest-selling bands as they tour our nation in support of their new album M A N I A.
A wave falls over the crowd and comes crashing down over us as the countdown begins, in 5 4 3 2 1 and boom we sound out our war cry as Fall Out Boy take the stage with lights flashing, drums banging, guitars playing and a call out to ‘raise you like a Phoenix.’
From the very start of tonight’s show, Fall Out Boy had the crowd pumping, every single song began with a roar from the crowd as they made their way through the best of the old stuff I love so much, mixed with some of the great new stuff the band is now more known for. Throughout the set streamers would be shot out, fireworks would explode, and fire would rain down from the ceiling. It was all very exciting and adding to all this vividry is a large screen whose film clips accompany themes to all songs played tonight.
Frontman Patrick Stump kept up his shy persona, preferring not to really interact with the crowd and leaving bassist Pete Wentz to do most of the talking, but I must say when Pat took to the Piano and did his best Elton John impersonation on the track Save Rock N Roll, he had the whole of Qudos lit by mobile phone light. Pat wouldn’t be the only musician in the band to wow with his instrument skills, drummer Andy Hurly had his chance to shine in an awesome drum solo consisting of banging out jams from artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Metallica and Blur. One of the comic interludes of the performance was the band exiting the stage as a video showed them running backstage to where two muppet Lama’s delivered one-liners about the band’s performance, akin to muppet legends Statler and Waldorf. They then exited the screen appearing on stage throwing out t-shirts into the crowd.
The bands’ return to the stage would see Pete missing and now playing from the sound desk. They would powerhouse through the rest of the set hitting us with so many great Fall Out Boy Anthems such as This Ain’t a Scene, Grand Theft Autumn and Thanx Fr Th Mmrs. Before set-list finisher Champion, Pete takes the time to acknowledge and thank the fans and say how great this thing is that all of us in the building tonight have helped create over the years.
The encore featured a killer tribute to actress Uma Thurman on the track named after her but it would have to conclude in spectacular firework flame-throwing fashion. As we sang out the last of the lyrics to Saturday a Pete Wentz now dressed in a NSW blues jersey took mike in hand and got into the crowd to finish things off proper as ticker tape rained down upon us. We celebrated in loud applause and thinking to ourselves wow, Fall Out Boy really are bona fide rock stars who put on one hell of a show.
Review – Chad
Photo Gallery – Christian Ross
