LONDON, 2nd November 2005 –
VANS and Burning Heart Records together with Agency Group thanks to the partnership with Eastpak have gathered four amazing bands to tour across Europe, stopping on the 2nd of November in London Astoria for the third show of the mini-tour after two previous gigs in Glasgow and Leeds.
Opening the show was the truly angry punk-rockers The Unseen (US) followed by the funny guys of Randy (Sweden) who played some tracks of their brand new album “Randy The Band” just released in October from Burning Heart, then it was time for Flogging Molly ( misc. Ireland ) to take on the stage.
The Astoria wasn’t sold out, but in fact not many more could have squeezed in during the show. The seven Flogging Molly’s have already been playing in London on several occasions in the past, giving successful shows and this time they did not disappoint. Their sound is somewhere between punk and Irish folk. They gave an excellent show with an array of instruments; acoustic and electric guitar, bass, drums violin, tin whistle, accordion, fiddle, mandolin and banjo. The security staff were pushed close to the stage, by the enthusiastic crowd that really filled out the venue, wanting Flogging Molly to continue to play but the Dublin born vocalist Dave King and his entourage had to leave the stage to the main band evening Millencolin from Sweden (pictured above during their last participation at American Warped Tour this summer).
As well as Flogging Molly, these four Swedes have been in London before, so it was a coming back for them, who are now well-known all over the world among fans of their kind of music thanks to their extensive touring, including three Warped Tours in US in the last few years.
Nikola (vocals and bass), Erik(guitar), Mathias(guitar) and Larzon(drums) was playing in front of the cover image from last album Kingwood, however they didn’t perform a show based on their latest album as they did in the last months to promote it, instead they played only four-five songs from it (including their latest release the single “Shut You Out”) .
With a semi-hidden Larzon in the back on drums, the other three especially Erik and Mathias running and jumping on stage, they started the gig with the energy of Kemp and going on with Fox and Man or Mouse (here Mathias exaggerated his jumps and lost the connection between guitar and amplifier).
They played both new and old songs even going back to “Same Old Tunes” (1994 Burning Heart Records) with “Mr.Clean” and “Leona”. About the latter Erik said; “we’re gonna play something very very old… maybe we have never played it in London…it’s about a girl coming from the South of Sweden… Leona was her name!”.
One of the coolest moment of the evening, which MUST be mentioned, is when Nikola alone on stage, with only a classical guitarr, played “The Ballad”, which I never heard live before at any of their concerts I have been to so far. The astonishing thing was that “The Ballad” is not properly the punk-rock song usually played in these concerts with the crowd jumping, spinning, surfing; and you could see all the people(at least the ones who had them) raising up their lighters. Both the ones standing on the ground floor and the ones who took the seated places in the upper floor. A few second into the song Larzon in took his place behind the drums and later at the right moment both Erik and Mathias appeared from nowhere and joined in with their guitars. Some great moments also during their most-known pieces as “No Cigar”, “Bullion” and “Penguins and Polarbears” which really drove the crowd crazy as it was possible to see “body-surfers” trying to reach the stage surfing on people from anywhere.
Some lucky people managed to get a “prize” for their effort of trying to get as close as possible to their heroes they got a plectrum or a drumstick.
“The Eastpak Antidote Tour” continued across the Europe until 20th November with the final date in Sweden.
It has been the first edition of this tour, but hopefully it will not be the last. For the London Astoria concert tickets were set at £16, which they were really worthy, just £4 for each group… the only disappointing thing has been that maybe the venue could have continued being open for one hour or two with some other music at the end of Millencolin show instead of closing at 11. But however it was definitely enough for a great night .
