Architects, Polaris, While She Sleeps @ Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide 6/8/2019
You want to know how stupendous the Architects show was in Adelaide on Tuesday? Do you want know how Australia’s Polaris created a wall of death that stretched to all four corners of the room? Do you want to know how breathtaking While She Sleeps were, it was almost religious?
Do yourself a favour and search on social media. Be it Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Hell, if MySpace is still up, go there too! Look at the posts, the videos, the photos. Feel the energy of While She Sleeps through your device. The apocalyptic vision of the circle pit during Polaris. The audience singing like a Sunday church choir during Architects and be envious.
It was a night for the ages. Anyone of these bands could’ve performed on their lonesome and the punters would’ve left happy. To have three at their peak of their game left plenty of sweaty and bruised bodies at the climax.
While She Sleeps burst out of the gates with the anthem You Are We and when that first riff hit, all the neurons in my head exploded in joy. One after another, like a crack poker player, they laid out belter after belter and all you could do is get swept up in it all. The crowd surfers came with constant force as the band matched and raised the intensity further. By the time the final strain of Hurricane reverberated throughout the venue, the sweat was flowing, the voice croaked and my neck sore from that age old exercise of head banging.
Polaris opened with Lucid and the circle pit got swept up with such frenzy, it could’ve been mistaken as a gateway to another world. Perhaps we had transported to another realm as the finely tuned Aussie’s kept the momentum going at breakneck speed dropping The Remedy into the middle of the set. No breather for you here! Just more flow of energy between band and crowd building to explosive levels as Consume finished the set.
In takes a big band to follow the chaos that had preceded before it and Architects are that band. While there was a fantastic and visually spectacular light show supplementing them, Architects is the band of this generation and their musical performance backs that up. Opening with Death Is Not Defeat, the crowd erupts and the band perform like they just hit gold. They had. The songs are sung loud, almost louder than the band as the convergence of energy between everyone reaches supernova. The set list features plenty of diamonds off the new album, finishing with Doomsday after 90 mins of bouncing, singing, moshing and just having a fucking great time.
The look on everyone’s faces at the conclusion of the show tells a story much better than any review could. Every band was epic. The audience was electric. Social media was on fire. This is a show that cannot not be described. You need to ‘Feel’ it, you need to sing ‘I found my love and let it kill me’ and ‘Holy Hell’, you need to experience Doomsday Architects style.
Live Review By Iain McCallum