Review – All Time Low

@ Newcastle o2 Academy, September 25 2009

Upcoming band All Time Low were made for Friday night fun.  The band’s career has started to spiral out of control in recent months with more than 60 million hits on their MySpace page alone. And this show went some way to explaining the ATL phenomenon.

The o2 Academy was almost at capacity with the band claiming ‘a biggest turn out in Britain’ thus far. And if you missed this you missed out. 

Friday Night Boys (do they change their name to suit the night? Ed) started the evening’s events, followed by The Audition. The Chicago-based band failed to live up to expectations with a hit and miss performance. It was not until the later songs where they seemed to hit any sort of stride with tracks like  The Way You Move and Warm Me Up finally getting the assembled masses going.

With the crowd nicely warmed up, the main attraction bounced straight in with a rousing rendition of Lost In Stereo. Throughout the set they mixed old with new, 6 Feet Under The Stars, Remembering Sunday, and Stella going down great with the crowd.

The Baltimore quartet never let the attentions of a respondent audience go unnoticed – talking at any given chance between songs and, on occasion, during their hit tunes.

The headliners finished the set with Weightless but it was not long after leaving the stage the chant for an encore vibrated around the intimate setting. The opportunity was not to be passed up, as ATL re-entered the stage and preformed Dammed If I Do, Dammed If I Don’t and, possibly their best known song, Dear Maria.

The band fulfilled the expectations of the crowd with a mix of hard hitting pop-rock and then some, with gifts of scarves, plectrums and drumsticks going to lucky members of a manic crowd.  It doesn’t look like it will be a long wait before ATL will be back in the North East, with the band announcing a possible visit in January.

All in all not bad for a band originally set up to cover Blink 182 and Green Day songs. The boys look to be on course to hit their all time high…

Adam Slater