Hilltop Hoods, Koolism andMystro @ The Royal Theatre(28/07/06)

Sat 29th Jul, 2006 in Gig Reviews

It was 7:30, and standing outside door one of the Royal Theatre were fifty loyal
Hilltop
Hoods
fans, and me. It was while waiting in the queue, listening to two of the faithful quizzing
each other on Hilltop trivia, and arguing about which of them was the bigger fan, that I
began
to feel somewhat out of place having not gotten a single right answer.

This was the first time I’ve seen the Royal Theatre used in this way, but it had a really
great atmosphere about it. A large part of the theatre’s seating was removed to make way
for
a general admission area, and the remaining seats were elevated quite a bit, which made a
couple of thousand people seem like an intimate crowd.

The doors were flung open at ten past eight, and a couple of thousand fans flooded into
the theatre. They were greeted by a lone DJ, mixing it up, for almost an hour, during which
the crowd became restless, and a chant “Hiiiiiilltop! Hiiiiiilltop!” began. The DJ was told to
hurry up three times before finally leaving the stage.

Mystro hit the stage a short time later, and delivered a great freestyle set,
which
had the crowd bopping; this was followed by local boys, Koolism, who, quite frankly,
were disappointing. Their set was just two guys playing to a backing track and making the
odd shuffle down to the other end of the stage (in my opinion it was just slightly better
than karaoke). They made quite a few attempts to get the crowd on side, including using
childish props. Their performance made me wonder how they won the inaugural Australian
Record Industry Association award for best urban release in 2004. Their set had me nervous
about what the Hilltop Hoods were about to deliver…

Another chant broke out in anticipation, the lights were dimmed, and out stepped DJ
Debris,
who opened the show with a remix of the title track off their latest album ‘The Hard Road’.
Pressure and Suffa MC soon joined him on stage to deliver what turned out to be a cracking
set, which was the perfect mix of old classics and stuff off their new album. They had the
crowd bursting at the seams.

After almost two hours, the stage was once again deserted, and the lights were dimmed
for the second time. A third chant broke out, this time for the band to perform an encore.
The
crowd was not disappointed, the Hilltop Hoods returned to the stage to play an encore
which
included ‘The Nosebleed Section’ (which funnily enough made one young girl’s ears bleed)
and ‘Dumb Enough’.

After three shows in Wollongong, Jindabyne and now Canberra, the ‘Stopping All
Stations’
tour is well and truly rolling!