Live Review: Papa Roach, The Pits

Put your middle fingers in the air and repeat: fuck Papa Roach!

Opening the second of two sold-out shows at Metro Theatre, Newcastle oddities The Pits brought the circus caravan to the big city. Their jazz-punk fusion and off-kilter oompah sounds rocked the fast-filling Metro Theatre. The mix of brass and punk guitars had a lot of people toe-tapping and nodding along. Ska is making a comeback and the future looks bright for this musical experiment.

Emerging from behind their Crooked Teeth kabuki cloth to a chorus of, "Fuck Papa Roach!" Jacoby Shaddix and co ripped straight into this album's title track (Crooked Teeth), the crowd rabid from the get-go.

Diving straight into Getting Away With Murder the energy in the room hit a peak that never subsided, every voice singing along to the massive chorus. The first of many circle pits opened up for the nu-metal smasher Between Angels And Insects with security kept busy with crowd-surfers, which continued well into the bouncing Face Everything And Rise.

Shaddix is straight out of 2003. With his spiked hair, chains and nu-metal flow, he rapped and spat his way through a hard-hitting set of mid-2000s classics and a few new choice cuts. Their cover of Blur's Song 2, done largely out of tune, saw the sold-out attendance yell every "Woo-hoo!" back at the sweat-drenched frontman.

Rocking straight from Forever into the chorus of Linkin Park's In The End, Shaddix shared a moment of clarity about losing Chester Bennington explaining that we all go through dark times. By this point in the set, Shaddix had said "motherfucker" more times than Tony Montana and Samuel L Jackson combined and, honestly, can every band please stop with the Wall Of Death? It's only cool if you're Slayer and there are a thousand filthy metalheads not five kids in attendance. Shit is not about to "get crazy". An odd anecdote about "shitting in the outback" and "wiping with a flip flop" had the floor crouching low and then jumping back up for Traumatic before the one-two punch of American Dreams and set closer Help.

But of course the five-piece were straight back on the stage for a four-song encore including Dead Cell, None Of The Above, a snippet of Eminem's Lose Yourself and the ultimate naughties hit Last Resort, which saw Shaddix in the crowd as punters clambered over each other to scream the refrain into the mic.

Closing with WWE Raw theme song ...To Be Loved, Shaddix promised Australia the band will return next year and won't leave it another 15 years between visits. And after two sold-out nights in Sydney alone, they'd be wise to keep that promise.