Rockezine.com concert review for Boy Sets Fire on Dec 09, 2002 in the Melkweg/Amsterdam

Boy Sets Fire

Melkweg-Amsterdam

Dec 09, 2002

La Par Force
The evening is opened by La Par Force from Germany, a band originated from Static 84, the latter having toured with BSF before. Their female pint-sized singer/guitarist is definitely an eye-catcher, but the hall is as good as empty when they start playing and the band keeps the interaction with the audience to an absolute minimum, so crowd response isn’t all that good. Most of the songs played can be found on their recent release ‘Piqueur Act’ with Dancing In The Dark Records, which the band run themselves. The melodic emorock they play is sometimes similar to Waterdown, but with less intensity. The band plays for only half an hour, but I wasn’t too disappointed with the short playing time.

Death By Stereo
By the time Death By Stereo takes the stage, the room is considerably more crowded, so the soundman decides it’s time to crank up the volume. Unfortunately, the sound is quite crap and this will be the case until halfway through the set by Boy Sets Fire.

The music Death By Stereo plays consists of equal amounts of punk and bad metal, which results in an abundance of cheesy metal leads and a singer who looks (and sounds) like ‘The Real Thing’-era Mike Patton, but with a mullet.

Sometimes the band sound like S.O.D. and sometimes like Mötley Crüe, but the stage performance is energetic and tight as fuck and the band are obviously having tons of fun. Most songs they play are from albums ‘Day Of The Death’ and ‘If Looks Could Kill, I’d Watch You Die’ and even a few new songs. Fun show and they manage to get the crowd going, but nothing historic happening here.

Boysetsfire
After a short intro, Boy Sets Fire bursts into ‘After The Eulogy’ and immediately drives the crowd into a frenzy. Early in the set, Nathan’s voice is hardly audible, but later on the soundman sorts himself out, so at the end of the show the sound is quite good.

his show is the last one of the tour, so the boys from Death By Stereo try their best to mess things up with some onstage-antics, including lots of beer, Death By Stereo nude pics and a man in an elephant-shaped cock pouch. Meanwhile, BSF shows why they are one of the leading bands in their genre by putting down a killer performance.

They play a couple of old songs (usually the crowd’s favorites), three songs from the new EP ‘Live For Today’ and a host of songs from their breakthrough album ‘After The Eulogy’, including ‘Rookie’, ‘The Force Majeure’ and ‘My Life In The Knife Trade’.

Not too much time is wasted on the band’s political agenda but they play tight, rock hard and, even though it’s the end of the tour, Nathan’s voice is still in great shape. The crowd eats everything up and during the entire set, there’s plenty of moshing and singing along going on on the dance floor. After a forty-minute set, the band returns for a two-song encore, so it wasn’t a marathon-performance, but still kicked plenty of ass.

Pics from www.boysetsfire.com and www.mainstage.de

(Review & Pics: Jasper Klein)