Live Review: Every Time I Die, Touche Amore, Marathon

“This is unbearable. Don’t do this anymore. Go to a fucking waterpark,” says Keith Buckley of Every Time I Die of the temperature in The Zoo tonight, but the discomfort starts long before the headliners are anywhere near the stage.

The crowd is already getting a schvitz on the moment they walk up The Zoo’s stairs. It’s almost too much to deal with, but it doesn’t seem to have much an effect on the intensity that Marathon bring to the stage. The local outfit plough through their tight, mathy set with the perseverance of a Kenyan distance runner. 

Stateside hardcore act Touché Amore are the next outfit to slog through the heat. Leaning heavily on their Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me and Is Survived By albums, the Californian outfit seems to be struggling with the heat. The nuance of the five-piece’s records sounds less immediate when presenting the material tonight. Given the intricate nature of the band’s sound, it’s understandable that the conditions in The Zoo wouldn’t be ideal for reproducing the material, but it still feels like a shame that the crowd doesn’t get a chance to catch Touché Amore in more comfortable surrounds.

Every Time I Die are probably the most “dude-bro” band in existence. Imagine Josh Brolin, Jeff Bridges and 1988 Bruce Willis locked in a competition that included events like taco eating, bong ripping, Big Buck Hunter shoot-outs and Belushi-style whiskey chugging and you’ve got a picture of the kind of madness that ETID routinely bring to their shows. Now picture them sweaty and predominantly shirtless from the moment they walk on stage. Yes, everybody knows it, and no matter how sweaty they already are, the crowd members are psyched for it: tonight is going to be a next-level celebration of full-frontal dude-ity.

ETID work through joints off last year’s From Parts Unknown, demonstrating more energy than the average crowd member can muster to clap. Not that there’s no reason to clap; the numbers the band plays from the back end of Ex Lives are excellent and stand out as some of the strongest material in their catalogue. The odd crowd-surfer leaps onto the stage, but for the most part it’s just too damn hot. What’s incredible about Every Time I Die is that where most of the crowd can’t even deal with the prospect of moving, the five dudes on stage are as animated as ever: guitarist Jordan Buckley is still doing his little one-man circle pits while his brother Keith does his best to make sure everybody in the first five rows gets a turn on the microphone. It’s ridiculous, but it’s a lot of fun – very, very sweaty fun. Please tour in winter next time, Every Time I Die.