::Review::
Tonight's venue is packed. Not of your usual gig-going sort, but of children. Yes, it appears that Manchester University has turned into a creche for the evening. That's the wonder of Kerrang! TV though - one popular video and you're packing out venues on your first tour. Still, before our hosts for this evening grace the stage, HELL IS FOR HEROES (5/5) would like to make a point. Their point is that they're well on the way to becoming one of the best bands in Britain at the minute. Although they've only released three songs ("Cut Down" and "Sick/Happy" on the double A-side single, and "I Can Climb Mountains" on a free Rock Sound CD), and despite the fact that they've only played a relative handful of shows (tours with Sunna, Icarus Line and American Hi-Fi, plus Reading / Leeds and a couple of headline shows), they're already a live force to be reckoned with. Songs like "You Drove Me To Do It" and "Cut Down" are the aural equivalent of a baseball bat to the cranium, and by the time the band close with "Sick/Happy" and lead singer Justin has thrown himself into the crowd, Hell Is For Heroes have a good amount of new fans. You may remember a band called Fungus. They supported a few bands, lasted a couple of years, and unceremoniously split up last year. They were rather good. AMERICAN HI-FI (3/5) sound almost exactly like Fungus, except not as good, and rather more successful. Opening with "Surround" is a good move, but after a while all the tracks start to sound very, very similar. True, "Flavour Of The Weak" is a truly superb song, as is set closer "I'm A Fool", but all the rest are rather... well, dull. The band do their best onstage by jumping around, and obviously enjoy what they're doing but what they're doing isn't anything amazing. That said, if they hadn't had Hell Is For Heroes supporting, they might've been in a much better position.

by Jon Nickson (editor@atomtan.co.uk).