My Chemical Romance + Every Time I Die + Drive By - Guildhall, Portsmouth. 02/11/05.

The beauty of doing local crew work at gigs is that you can use your pass to get into a gig that you wouldn't want to pay £15 or whatever to attend and that is exactly what I do tonight after spending five hours unloading far too many lights and lifting heavy PA stuff. I wanted to check out Every Time I Die so headed back early and using the handy pass avoided the snake like mass of teenagers waiting to get in and was able to catch the opening act Drive By, a pleasant bunch of chaps who do prime pop punk ripe for MTV. Unfortunately much of the what should be a crunching guitar attack is lost beneath a mighty bass rumble that I find irritating as the sound echoes around the Guildhall, one of the many reason why I hate attending large concerts. However, they manage to get quite a pit going amongst the early birds and if they get the luck of the draw the largely teenage crowd will be able to see them all over MTV in the coming months.

Every Time I Die have been gaining a fair bit of attention recently and it's easy to see why as they sound excellent tonight. Here is a band who know how to work a large stage and audience as they run around non-stop and deliver a pile driving mash up of a set. ETID look like they have been put together from a sophisticated indie band with the singer wearing a brown velvet jacket, nice jeans and brown shoes & standard indie guitar player while the others look like they've been dragged from a beer drinking, meat head metal band. But combined they make an amazing blast of energy, stoner grooves give way to classic metal riffing before firing off into epileptic blast beats and spasmodic rhythms with a pure hardcore heart. It's adrenalin pumping fists in the air modern metal and they manage to create an enormous pit in the middle and any one walking in at this moment would think that ETID were the headlining band such is their swagger and power. Expect to hear a whole lot more about this fine band as they look like they could be the new heroes on the block; an awesome display of power and control and skullcrushing tunes.

I feel like I'm at some kind of teen pop concert when My Chemical Romance take to the stage, the screams are ear splitting and it's at this point you notice that most of the crowd are probably under 18 bar a few mums and dads waiting at the back and you realise that MCR have cornered the market in dark teenage angst and merchandise marketing. They come on stage to a tune by The Smiths clad in black, the lead singer with a priest outfit on, two big gothic arches looming in the background with white backgrounds so various images can be projected on to them and a drum riser centre stage looking like a massive pulpit to preach from which is exactly what MCR do. Musically they play accessible dark metal with titles like Sorrows, Cemetery Drive, Deathwish and Ghost; they play it well and know their audience who worship them. The sound is once again poor, bass heavy so that guitars are lost and the drums are just not powerful enough which is a shame because to non-fans like myself it is difficult to pick out anything to grab hold of and enjoy, any moments of subtlety found in their recordings are completely lost but the seething mass of bodies down the front don't seem to notice as they prey at the feet of their dark heroes and spend a fortune on merchandise. No doubt the best gig in the world to their fans, as for me, I'm not a big fan of their live sound though they do put on a good show it has to be said. I'll settle for listening to the couple of tracks I've got at home, turn the lights down and pretend I'm a teenager covered in eyeliner again.