Live Review: Fall Out Boy

In pop culture terms, Fall Out Boy's three-year hiatus is barely a blip on the calendar, but the fervour the band were greeted with at the Metro showed the still predominantly young crowd has been waiting for this return for every single day during those three years.

And this was a show for the die-hards. Rather than book a support, Hot Damn DJs warmed up the crowd with a fairly predictable mix of recent party starters (Skrillex's remix of Cinema) and emo/pop-punk standards (Blink-182, Paramore). The cheer that greeted Teenagers by My Chemical Romance suggested the news of their split was still a fresh wound.

Looking lean and refreshed after their time away, Fall Out Boy wasted little time with banter or gimmicks in a greatest hits set that seemed to favour the older material. Live, the band has always had a heavier, riff-heavy sound and a tattooed and very muscly and shirtless drummer Andy Hurley was like a machine, driving songs from the back. Guitarist Joe Trohman and bassist and band figurehead Pete Wentz spun, ran and jumped their way across the stage to crowd favourites such as Dead On Arrival, This Ain't A Scene... and the highly charged new single My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light 'Em Up) with its glam rock refrain.

This show was everything the die-hards would've wanted and the energy feeding back to the band even from the very back rows at The Metro was incredible. It's just a shame that singer Patrick Stump's vocals weren't mixed to give fans the full effect of his rather stunning voice. Stump's blue-eyed soul vocals sets this band apart from almost all of its peers but at this gig it seemed the mixer was content to just turn the instruments up and let Stump's voice fight his way through the noise. But it was a minor flaw on a night when this reunited foursome exceeded expectations.