As It Is and This Wild Life combined forces to play The Garage in Highbury, London as a part of their co-headline tour before hitting Slam Dunk Festival.
Support came from Boston Manor and Seaway who hit the stage to give the audience a thorough warm-up.
This Wild Life, consisting of Kevin Jordan and Anthony Del Grosso from Long Beach, began to set-up for themselves before diving straight into their set with “History” with the crowd singing especially louder during the chorus. An instrumental then led swiftly into “Over It” with an instrumental, followed by “Roots And Branches (Meant To Be Alone)“. There is raw emotion in Jordan’s voice whilst Del Grosso shows his nimble finger work along the fretboard.
Jordan chats to the audience and tells them about previous shows in London and how glad they were to be playing a larger venue with new fans before sharing the story for “No More Bad Days”; a song a wrote for his mother as she fought cancer. The next song was the first acoustic song they had ever written, “Ripped Away“, inclusive of a partial cover blink-182’s “First Date” before leading to “Better With You” to which the crowd sang ‘whoa‘ with feeling, in all the right places.
The crowd whistled along to “Puppy Love” prior to erupting cheers as the duo began playing their most popular cover of Bring Me The Horizon’s “Sleepwalking“. Del Grosso headed to the drum kit at their end of the final song “Concrete” to end on a high.
The atmosphere began to build as “Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble” is played and As It Is make their way onstage, beginning their set with their first track, “Speak Soft“, off their debut album “Never Happy, Ever After“. Frontman, Patty Walters, addresses the London crowd and expresses his gratitude for helping the band’s dream to play in the main room of The Garage and encourages the crowd to follow their dreams with “Cheap Shots & Setbacks“.
The band hit rewind, playing tracks “Bitter, Broken Me” and “Horoscopes” from their earlier EP “This Mind Of Mine“, resulting in a surge of crowd-surfers and the audience jumping up and down, straight into “Concrete” and the energy continued to soar as the crowd sang out to “Can’t Save Myself“.
Slowing things down, Walters then performs “My Oceans Were Lakes” as a solo acoustically before the rest of the band members build a crescendo to finish the song. The drum beat began to build up the tempo again with “Silence (Pretending’s So Comfortable)” and As It Is’ pop-punk sound got the crowd back to jumping on their feet as they ended their set with “Sorry” and “Dial Tones“. With acrobatic jumps from Walters, there was energy throughout As It Is’ set as the band fed of the bouncing crowd.
Check out both bands at Slam Dunk Festival by clicking here.