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The doors at The Hi-Fi opened only a few short minutes after the designated time of 5pm, the restless line of under 18s trailing off down the street. Small and intimate, the venue was well lit – with enough light for patrons to navigate the stairs, but not so much as to detract attention from the stage. Patrons entered the venue while Wherewolves were playing the first set which was unfortunate as those at the back of the line missed a fair portion of this promising performance. While the audience was fairly subdued at first -some moving to loiter in the pit and others hanging back and checking out the merch stall, by the closing songs the band was met with cheers and some enthusiastic moshing.

The Academy Is… were met with fervour as they launched straight into their first song, Summer Hair = Forever Young. Charismatic frontman William Beckett strutted across the stage, throwing the mic stand around, twirling the mic by its cord, doing a short performance of the Thriller dance and engaging the audience as they screamed, moshed and sang along. The songs Neighbors and We’ve Got A Big Mess On Our Hands – both from the 2007 album Santi – seemed to be the crowd favourites, eliciting the loudest and most animated acclamation of their set and encouraging Beckett in his stage antics. These included plucking one of the phones being waved by an audience member to visually demonstrate the lyrics “Somebody get my phone / So I can throw it in a public pool / And watch it float / And as it’s slowly sinking down …” before handing it back. The entire band appeared to be having a great time; Adam Siska, Michael Guy Chislett and Mike Carden grinning and laughing throughout their performance and on drums Andy “The Butcher” Mrotek possessed a seemingly tireless intensity and enthusiasm for the duration of the set. For their closing song, About A Girl, Beckett requested the audience sing along and even though they doubtlessly would have anyway (having spent the entire set alternating between cheering and singing along) the crowd joined in louder than before. Ending with a flair, Beckett threw the mic stand into the air one final time, and held it in triumphant salute to the audience before leaving the stage.

The chant “An-ber-lin” started a good five minutes before the band took the stage and the band was greeted by an impressively boisterous crowd. From the moment they walked on stage, starting their set with The Resistance, Anberlin had the audience so active they barely stopped moving throughout the entire evening, jumping and screaming along with an energy that was somehow still intact after two hours of standing and moshing to the two support bands. Between the roaring crowd and the percussion, the vocals of Stephen Christian were difficult to hear for the first few songs but it soon balanced out. The band utilised the stage space available, giving attention to each side of the stage and working the crowd up with both a visual and audible performance.

Inevitable signalled the transition to a few slower songs and these were met with the same unrestrained enthusiasm from the audience. As the set continued through Adelaide and Feel Good Drag it was difficult to pinpoint a crowd favourite, as each song seemed to elicit a louder response from the crowd. The cries for an encore were met with a few more songs, finally ending on (*Fin). Even as the crowd of teenagers spilled out onto the footpath it seemed as though the adrenalin that pushed them through three hours of almost constant movement crowded in front of the stage still hadn’t dissipated.