Live Review: Dead Letter Circus, I Am Giant

Dead Letter Circus clearly take a mammoth amount of influence from Karnivool; to put it lightly, they revolve their whole sound around Karnivool's general vibe. It was even down to onstage mannerisms that frontman Kim Benzie could draw comparisons to Ian Kenny. Yes, the latter is an exemplary singer and so is Benzie, to a certain extent, but as an audience we want to experience something unique-sounding. Though they are talented musicians, Dead Letter Circus rely primarily on this ambience and seem to forget that heavy riffs make up an important part of setting off a crowd — not that the crowd was lacking in numbers at the sold out Uni Bar show.

Support act I Am Giant managed to escape some of the above connotations, perhaps due to the slight generational gap between them and the band they were supporting. While there were some interesting moments, they in turn sounded a lot too like Dead Letter Circus. Some of their heavier moments proved exciting, but at the end of the day the feeling could not be shaken that the same melody was being played over and over again, and being sang over in exactly the same fashion. Despite some intricacies in the guitar work, the lack of a challenging nature in the softcore pop-prog was only slightly negated by the fact that it was mildly enjoyable and uplifting. The crowd, who were overall enjoying themselves, dismissed I Am Giant with a number of cheers, and welcomed Dead Letter Circus with massive roars. There was undoubtedly energy in the atmosphere with some diehard fans in the front bopping and bouncing, but in stark comparison to their assumed idols Karnivool, Dead Letter Circus' music itself fell short.