Due to circumstances beyond my control, I miss most of Cemetery Sun. They are a four-piece band from Sacramento, and from the queue outside the Academy, they sound OK. There’s melody, a decent beat, and they’re not too shouty. I make it in just in time to catch the last song and find them doing some typical noughties rap-metal, very obviously inspired by Linkin Park and their ilk. It’s bouncy and the crowd are enjoying it and bouncing with them so I’m sad that I saw so little of it. Hopefully, I will catch them again at some point. 

Lilith Czar’s drummer has lights on her sticks. This warms me to them immediately, and my first impressions are backed up by a rather immense set. The sound is a little iffy, with the drums and bass being way too high in the mix, but this seems to be a feature of the whole evening and might just have been an acoustic issue with my small space towards the back of the room. The music is melodic goth crossed with power metal and held together nicely by the eponymous frontwoman. There are pose boxes at the front of the stage and the band makes full use of them, scurrying about and throwing shapes and stuff. The sound, despite being extremely loud and somewhat overwhelmed by kick-drum, is clean and powerful.

Lilith has a good voice and despite the darkness of the music, is actually quite bright and catchy. Most of the songs featured are from the recently-released “Created From Filth And Dust” album and receive a rapturous response from the packed-out Academy. There’s a cover thrown in, and it’s a beefed-up version of Stevie Nicks’ ‘Edge of 17’; It works well as an atmospheric doom song, who would have thought? She even brings out a tambourine for the full Stevie experience. Standout track for me was closer ‘The Anarchy’, which was a proper stompy air-punching kind of affair. I enjoyed that, this band is one to watch I think. 

So to headliners Black Veil Brides. They too are a noughties band, starting out in 2006 as a sort of generic screamo combo and releasing their first album to muted applause and respect. They then had something of a revelation I think, they found their God and his name is Nikki Sixx. The floppy emo fringes became spiky feather cuts and the angsty songs became power anthems. It was at this stage of their career (2011) that I discovered them with their album “Set The World On Fire”, which became a firm favourite in my personal collection. Four further albums followed over the next 12 years and despite them touring the world extensively for all these years this is the first time I have actually seen them live, so I am rather excited! 

The first thing I notice is that this is a band that appeals to all ages. There is a riot of black leather and black lipstick in the teens down at the front. There is a plethora of chains and more black lipstick from the middle section who were teens when the band started and are suddenly wondering when they became middle-aged and sensible. Finally, there are us oldies at the back, nodding along and maybe having a little dance. Many of us have brought our kids or even grandkids and as the night goes on we smile with, our own black-coated lips, at their antics down the front.

The intro tape is the full orchestral version of ‘Phantom Of The Opera’, providing all the pomp and ceremony that is required to introduce a band like this. This crashes straight into opening track ‘Crimson Skies’ and we are off, careering through a 14-song main set and 3-song encore that defines their whole career so far and keeps everybody happy. I still find the drums to be over-miked and find myself inadvertently vibrating on occasion, and not in a good way! There are a couple of bits where I can see guitars, shapes are being thrown, guitar faces abound on stage but I can’t actually hear the guitars which is a shame. Overall it’s bearable though, and the sheer exuberance and joy of the performance comes through in the end. (BVB diehards did you see what I did there?!) I particularly like the bits where guitarist Jinxx swaps to violin, because who doesn’t like a bit of thrash violin occasionally?

There is literally everything in the mix tonight. Screamy fast thrash, epic air-punching anthems, whoah-oh choruses, social commentary, arm-waving, crowd singalongs, the whole gamut of the live music experience is wrapped up in a neat little package and presented to us with a black-lipsticked kiss. Highlights for me? The newest song ‘Devil’ with its fast-paced drum beat, not so much shout at the devil as kick him in the balls. All the violin songs but especially ‘Shadows Die Shadows Rise’ with its touch of Celtic and atmospheric vocals. And of course ‘Fallen Angels’, the middle encore song and the song that brought me here in the first place. 

Throughout the evening Andy Biersack’s voice varies between a gentle caress and a blunt instrument, and the crowd response is both hyper and hypnotic. There’s emotion as well as aggression, and many of the black-ringed eyes are leaving tear tracks down faces by the end of it. This is a band who have grown up in the public eye and matured from a bunch of confused youngsters shouting at their dads into a band that really can take on the world and win, and I’m totally here for that!

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!

Black Veil Brides, Lilith Czar, Cemetery Sun