The legendary Brand New headlined this years Hit The Deck Festival and what a headline show it was.
Before Brand New even graced the stage you could tell that there was going to be something special about this gig, it wasn’t going to be just another headline act playing a good show. There was a special atmosphere and feeling in the air that I haven’t experienced at any show before whether its at a festival, arena or tiny intimate show.
As a warm up to Brand New the capacity crowd in Rock City gave a phenomenal rendition of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody‘ which is now one of my favourite gig memories. Then it happened, Brand New made their way on stage and the greatest set I have ever witnessed started. You know you are witnessing something special when instead of jumping around and screaming people just started hugging when their favourite song starts. Or in the case of the girl a few people in front of me, breaking down in tears when ‘Guernica‘ started to play.
Brand New created and played a set that blended all 4 of their albums perfectly. Each song seemed to naturally follow the other regardless which album it was from. They played with a ferocity that the heaviest and angriest of bands would love to achieve but also with such raw and bare emotion that during ‘Degausser’ I felt tears start to come to my eyes which after over 5 years of attending shows and seeing countless bands and songs live is something I have never experienced before in my life.
At no point was there a lull or dip in the quality of the show and energy that was exerted by the band. For most of the set the crowd was relatively quiet compared to the screaming and singing you usually get at shows. This wasn’t due to the crowd being bored, tired or uninterested. Every single person in the room was just awestruck by what they were listening to. All people seemed to be able to do apart from hug was stand there and take in everything that Brand New were giving to them. That was until they played ‘Seventy Times Seven‘. For 3 and a half minutes the room exploded with bodies being thrown towards the stage and the words being screamed back with as much emotion that went into the song when it was first wrote.
I don’t think anybody in the room wanted Brand New to finish playing, everyone seemed more than happy to stand there and listen until the day they died but I don’t think anybody could complain with the song that finished the set. Vincent Accardi, Brian Lane and Garrett Tierney left the stage to leave just Jesse Lacey and his guitar to play ‘Soco Amaretto Lime‘, the perfect end to a set which is as close to perfect as you can get.
Leaving the venue and driving home I was almost sad because I realised that I could attend 1000 more shows, seeing 1000 different bands, of various different genres but I will never experience a set and a show as good as Brand New played that night.