Caskets, The Home Team, Stepson, Bad Love @ Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide 11/5/1974

Brits Caskets return a year after last treading the Australian boards as support to Windwaker – with their cracking album Reflections bubbling away across the world – with a headline tour down under.

Lots of shows are all ages however even in my travels I’ve yet to see as many kids, some as possibly as young as seven years old, in the crowd as tonight. It’s a wonderful sight to behold, to see the next generation down at the front singing while it also acknowledges what Caskets mean to so many.

Caskets are after all a band of deeply intimate lyrics, harmonies, metalcore riffs all wrapped in a giant comforting hug of security.

Opening tonight in what is a line up of extraordinary talent is Melbourne’s Bad/Love with vocalist Landon Kirk charming and affable. The bands pop metalcore is going over well with a packed room already, the moves and style in the dynamics in songs like Violence and new track 5am getting the crowd pumped. Think metalcore if it’s done in the 80’s with a teen heart throb as the singer and you’ve got the glory that is Bad/Love.

Hailing from Brisbane, Stepson take the night in a slightly different direction with their angst hardcore emo punk. Singer Brock Conry towers over the band, making him seem imperious as he engages the audience through track like Venom – “the heaviest song we’ve written” – Deeper Inside which has the room clapping and implores wall of deaths to happen. My thoughts hilariously are for the seven years olds in the audience going to school on Monday and doing circle pit in the sand pit. That’s the kind of influencer we need.

Americans The Home Team are playing their first ever Australian shows and in frontman Brian Butcher they have a singer whose smile would melt the coldest of hearts. We get to see a bit of it too as the band noticeably enjoy the show switching from funk, to surf to disco all while presented as metal. High kicks, twirls, high pitched squeals from the audience as the band drop Move It Or Lose It, Scary Movies and On.

With the pump up music being Bon Jovi’s Living On A Prayer, and three brilliant support acts, the audience is primed for Caskets as they open with Drowned in Emotion and the room bounces. The screams are loud for the Yorkshire lads as ‘Believe’ follows with its mouth-watering switch between light and dark igniting the pit.

Hold Me Now, The Only Ones and More Than Misery transcend a rock show as camera lights, synchronised clapping and kids on shoulders bopping away take over.

Glass Heart is biblical and for closer Better Way Out, vocalist Matt Flood makes his way to high five everyone of the kids in the crowd with the performance even making this old grumpy reviewer sing with gusto.

Caskets shows are that shot in the arm you need to remind yourself that life is beautiful, that being with friends and listening to live music is the greatest drug of all. That is the Better Way Out.

Live Review By Iain McCallum