Hinder - Big Top, Sydney(04/10/07)

Mon 8th Oct, 2007 in Gig Reviews

Walking through the iconic entrance of Luna Park always gives me shivers, memories of so many fantastic days spent as a young boy on Coney Island and riding the Big Dipper until the thrill was no longer present. Tonight that feeling was still there – but not for the fairy floss or fast rides, it was the fact Luna Park’s Big Top will play home to the Oklahoma City quintet Hinder, who just happens to be the latest winner of the MySpace lotto winning fame and worldwide recognition.

Front man Austin Winkler stood atop the fold back monitors in a manner that Creed’s Scott Stapp would admire. His vocals, while dynamic in the bands overall sound, still managed to convey a forced gravel voice like Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger. Aesthetically Austin looked like a less-worn-and-tattooed Josh Todd of Buckcherry. He spewed gratuitous profanities like, well, Corey Taylor reciting every naughty word he ever knew as an adolescent.

Winkler and his band Hinder played its solid and energetic generic rock to a strong crowd of whooping females and their embarrassed-looking boyfriends. No surprise what demographic this band are well marketed to.

The band reproduces the albums overall sound almost identically, polished arrays of songs that have knack for recycling elements of the most familiar rock, both classic and current.
Playing songs from its 38-minute debut, Extreme Behavior (Universal),

Hinder wanted to be seen as bad-boy rockers with a lurking danger; hence the repeatedly flashed devil horns and Winkler’s precisely unkempt hair and sleeveless look. But its midtempo retro-grunge sound and structured, colorless songs belie those aspirations. However, it seems to work as the band bounce around the stage, Austin invited his hungry audience to dance, scream and sing along to every metallic guitar anthem and bleeding heart ballad.

The cell phone camera flashing crowd obliged and shouted out song requests that Hinder had no problems answering.

The crowd seemed charmed, especially when the band played its hit single Better Then Me a ready-for-radio post-grunge ballad if
there ever was one. But these fans were familiar with almost every song on Extreme Behavior, reminding Hinder that they’re no one-hit wonders.

The first-person characters on display in the band’s hour long set are best portrayed within the band’s lyrics, as suggesting that they hate women as much as they want them. “I walked in and saw her on the bed/There was nothing to be said,” Winkled sneered in Room 21 “The sex is so much better when you’re mad at me,” he sniped during the show-ending Get Stoned. During By the Way, a Nickelback-like power ballad with a typically giant chorus, he sang of “watching you scream in the middle of a breakdown.”

Hinder is – and likely always will be – best known for its pity-the-cheater anthem Lips of an Angel. The smash single recounts a late-night phone call from a would-be squeeze, but there’s a catch: The dude’s current chick is there when the call comes in. Ultimately, Hinder’s sincerity can be tied to the chorus of the most popular rock track in the country today: “My girl’s in the next room/Sometimes I wish she was you.” Just sometimes, mind you.