US metal mainstays, Miss May I, are down under for their The Shadows Inside Tour, and they have teamed up with newcomers Sylar. Tonight, it is the Factory Theatre’s turn in Sydney to turn the volume up past eleven and get ready for some metal mayhem on what is being touted as one of the best heavy tours of 2017.
Tonight’s show had Justice for The Damned & Oh/Villain as the show openers making sure we all warmed up and stretched for the international acts of Sylar and Miss May I. These local lads really represented the home-grown metalcore scene tonight and I expect the word to get out about them and see them on more support slots in the near future.
Sylar are relative newcomers to the scene, hailing from New York the quartet came out and took to the stage hard. Branding a new metal type of sound these guys clearly show their great city’s musical influence as the set sounds like a mash of hip-hop and metal. I really liked it and I wasn’t alone in my enthusiasm for their music as a fair few others had gathered round to mosh out on tracks such as the opener, Dark Dayze, early hit Prescription Medication and the set finisher Soul Addiction, these guys devastated the crowd tonight with their frantic and crushing sound.
Right, time to get down to brass tacks here, as the cd playing in between sets just cuts out, the drums begin to rattle away, the band walk out and lead singer Levi Benton just growls out the name of our town ‘Sydney’ and demands we get our hands up. We get them up and things get going straight away to Lost in The Grey from the latest album Shadows Inside.
Keeping our hands up and fists raised would be the theme of the night as they showcased songs from what some metal core enthusiast consider the album of the year, and it easy to see why when hearing live tracks such as Casualties and Swallow Your Teeth which were early in the set but set closers of Under Fire and Shadow Inside just slayed us all. But it wasn’t all new stuff, Forgive and Forget being a real treat for long-time fans and really opened the circle pit.
The night wasn’t all chaos incarnate as vocalist Levi would send out a message of us being all family in this room tonight, drawing us all in close for a huge sing-along and drummer Jerod Boyd would let fly one hell of a drum solo. Things up front were frantic all night and I wasn’t sure many of us had much left in the tank, but the band had hardly left the stage before our cheers had brought them back out to give us just one more song and that song was Relentless Chaos, not only in title but by the action that it led to in the pit. All in all, the bands tonight gave us one hell of a show and we in return gave them our all.
Review – Chad
Photo Gallery – Christian Ross
