Promotional posters for the annual Boomtown Showdown featured a certain terrifyingly large Japanese lizard and an equally large, hairy gorilla, a completely appropriate metaphor considering this years monster line up of bands.
Opening the show were local act, Her Latest Flame. I’d been interested to hear how their recently adjusted line up would sound, with former bassist, Tamiya, taking up lead vocals. Unfortunately, I only got to see their last few songs, I was genuinely surprised and delighted with their new sound. While the music was relatively the same, they now had more of a pop-punk feel. They were still slightly boring on stage, but I enjoyed them more than I had before.
The evening turned out to be quite an interstate affair with Western Australians, Elora Danan, second to stage. Although relatively unknown, they put on a good rock performance and were thankfully far more entertaining on stage. Their guitarist earned them points for still playing, despite an injury.
Up next were the scariest, and possibly drunkest, band of the tour, if preceding reputation is anything to go by. The crowd swelled for Brisbane’s Amity Affliction; electronic keyboards added something different and good to their hardcore/screamo sound. There was a slight pause before their last song, when lead singer jumped into the crowd to interrupt a fight that had broken out. Back on stage the band closed their set with I Heart Throbsy, producing the biggest reaction from the audience up to that point.
Hometown favourites, In Fiction took to the stage as the audience cheered and screamed enthusiastically. Girls love them; with the majority of the front few rows made up of those of the female persuasion. Despite an awkward start, things fell into place by their second song Silhouette, which also produced a large inflatable beachball, which spent quite a few songs bouncing around and over the crowd. Midway through the set they slowed down their pop-rock for crowd favourite sing-a-long Calender Notes and also mentioned they had just finished writing material for their debut album. The whole band looked and sounded happy to be on stage, before closing with the catch-as-hell When the Camera’s Off.
The dissipated crowd reassembled just as The Getaway Plan took to the stage accompanied by The Terminator theme. Opening with new single Streetlight, the band kept their momentum going into Hide Your Children; lead singer, Matthew Wright, pulling a few Adam Lazzara dance moves. He also brought out another guitar for new song, City Meets the Sea. For their first show back in three months, The Getaway Plan showed no signs of being out of practice. Thanks to the midnight curfew, the crowd made the most of last song The New Year; an unfortunately rushed end to a great night of Australian talent.
