Live Review: Foxes, Surroundings, Idle Eyes

It may have been bucketing down with rain for much of the evening but that didn’t deter a hoard of punters from heading down to Amps dressed in onesies to dance the night away in one room or let loose to the onslaught of sound in the other.

This scribe was obviously there for the latter, and Idle Eyes kick started proceedings with the intro to Black Sabbath’s War Pigs before launching into their own material, vocalist Shah Abdul Latip lumbering around the stage, roaring into the mic and getting people moving quickly with surging riffs and frenetic pace. The band’s 2015 material, Chokehold and Days Like This both got a look in and became the standout tracks for the evening; a clear indicator that the group are heading in the right direction.

Surroundings brought a little more melody to the fore, with a number of songs containing drawn out instrumental plays before vocalist Nick Roberts would take back control and power on. It was the debut show for Matthew Templeman on bass, now a permanent member of the band, and given he also plays in Statues, who released one of the albums of the year in January, there was not a doubt to be had. The band were tight, composed and skilful, and they even threw in a new song for good measure.

It was a night of new songs and new directions for the bands on stage, and headliners Foxes were no different. They’ve been working on an album for the last few years now since releasing their brilliant five-track EP in 2012, with the occasional dabble in split EPs since. They played a couple of newies that showed plenty of promise, and perhaps a bit of a change in direction toward the more post-rock path, but it certainly seemed like they wanted to keep the cat in the bag until their actual launch sometime down the track, having only announced the album the day before. As such, the five-piece mainly stuck to tracks from the 2012 EP, but that suited everyone just fine; …So I Walk Alone Into The Dawn Of The Next Day culminated with a group of people getting in close to the microphone and screaming “My thoughts will be the death of me!”, while Blue performed live still remains one of the most captivating experiences had by this reviewer while watching a band at any level. All up, a fantastic evening for local music.