Burn The Fleet/I Am Forever/Ashestonangels/Saint[The]Sinner

Champions, Bournemouth

One of Southampton’s finest exports Burn The Fleet are back to finally headline at Champions, after their last successful show here in December 2010 supporting local up coming Bournemouth band Death Of An Artist. They have this year toured the UK with the mighty Don Broco with further tours into Europe planned this Autumn/Winter with also the rumoured release their much anticipated debut album. There have been three fine support acts lined up and the first of these to take to the stage are Saint[The] Sinner who are a newly emerged local Bournemouth band. They have a hardcore sound with full on guitars and screamo vocals with well mixed classical backing soundtracks which strangely mix well into their live sound. This style has always been more a niche until bands like ‘Bring Me The Horizon’ brought it to the masses and by the look of this years set they played a the Reading Festival it is certainly growing at a frantic pace.

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The six piece fronted by vocalist the heavily tattooed Dimitri Gjiknuri power through a set comprising of tracks from the debut E.P called ‘Da Vincis Demise’, the 20 minute burst of brutal power and energy impresses the audience who are certainly given more than a solid warm up for the night ahead.

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Ashestoangels from Bristol are next up and I don’t think Champions really knows what has hit them, the sheer energy that comes from the band in the 1st 5 minutes of their set is just so impressive, Lead singer ‘Crilly’ is flying all over the stage and in the audience with all sorts of acrobatics while still maintaining a fairly good vocal level The bands Goth tinged punk rock proceeds at a fast past with lots of encouraged audience participation including a mass sit down on the dance floor. They leave the stage to mass appreciation from everyone in the place, certainly making their trip from the west country worthwhile, let hope Ashestoangels grace Bournemouth with the presence again sometime soon.

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‘I Am Forever’ from Glastonbury take to the stage in a confident manner and do their best to follow Ashestoangels top performance. The bands twin guitar rock creates an easy to listen to safe sound that does not have nothing really original about it, the four musicians certainly know how to play, however there is a level of excitement missing as seen in many other bands, the highlight of the set was the excellent ‘Only Stars Can See’ from their first release The Tragic Tale Of Jonny Pumpkinhead’ that has an decent infectious riff.

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So finally Burn The Fleet take to the stage, the big man vocalist Andrew Convey stands in the middle of the stage with his bass turned up to an earth shattering volume that radiates through the whole of the building shaking it’s very foundations, flanked by guitarists James Swabey and Jack Spurway with drummer Dan Northover completing the line up. The band power through a set comprising of a great set of songs that have been around for a while impressing old and new fans like, however slightly disappointing that the band did not have any new material to perform as yet, which I am sure is just around the corner with the new album imminent. The highlight of the set as always is the stunning ‘Handfuls Of Sand’ which sees mass participation with the audience singing along in beautiful unison, a fantastic end to a great night.

Burn The Fleet – Set List
Nautilus
The Greatest Fire
Black Holes
Fictional Children
River Song
Handfuls of Sand

Videos
Burn The Fleet