Gigs

Gig Review: Kill Hannah + Brigade

[Venue: Academy, Oxford]
[Date: 12 June 2008]

Led by Will Simpson, Brigade have well and truly been a touring band over the last few months since the release of their second album ‘Come Morning We Fight‘. In my book that shows the mark of a good band - if they’re willing to put in the effort then they’ll be worth my time. However, that said, endless touring is useless if you don’t have good quality music to back it up, but luckily Brigade have that in droves.

The band enters the disappointingly half-full venue to a mixture of feedback and powerful strobe lights. It’s an impressive entrance that builds up an expectation of something good and fortunately the band don’t disappoint. They rip into a set built on, primarily, tracks from their new album but do dip into their debut album ‘Lights’ too. It’s been a couple of months since I last saw Brigade, but in that short space of time its clear they’ve really stepped up their live shows with everything really sounding tight and compact. I was particularly impressed with the guitar playing of James Plant - he seemed really confident, his fingers ferociously moving along the fretboard of his guitar.

Brigade are almost the prime examples of how a modern day live rock band sound; big heavy riffs, powerful drumming, and emotion-filled vocals. If they could just add in a little guitar solo here and there I’d be happy as Larry! The band is playing a couple of festivals next month before they begin their second full headline tour of the year in July and August.

Funnily enough, the last time I saw Kill Hannah was also the last time I saw Brigade - they were both supporting Aiden on their recent UK tour. I’ll admit, back then, I wasn’t entirely convinced by Kill Hannah. Their set seemed to drag on and frontman Mat Devine seemed preoccupied with removing half his clothing. Fortunately this time around the band really changed my opinion of them with a performance that was full of integrity, and quite frankly, really fun.

They kicked off proceedings with ‘Boys And Girls’, a clear fan favourite from their recently released debut UK album ‘Until There’s Nothing Left Of Us’. It’s a fun song that got the crowd jumping and set the tone for the rest of their set. Something that I noticed about Mat Devine this time round was that his voice seemed different to how it does on CD - dare I say it, he was a lot more “manly” sounding, which definitely gave the band a heavier, more convincing sound.

Standout tracks of the night for me were ‘Kennedy’, ‘Ten More Minutes With You’ and ‘Lips Like Morphine’. As a lot of bands do, particularly from America, they always big up the city they are playing in by suggesting it’s their favourite and that they love to play there. So it was no surprise when Kill Hannah did the same during the gig. However, you got the impression that they actually meant the affection they were showing. They genuinely seemed really grateful for the success they’ve had in the UK and they certainly went some way to repaying the support shown with a fine performance in Oxford.

The band will be back in the UK during September and October for a full headline tour as part of their Hope For The Hopeless UK/European tour.

For fans of: Hundred Reasons, Head Automatica, The Cure
Band links = Kill Hannah | Brigade

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