Jo and Rob go to the Forum

8th April. The Forum. Adelaide. Mayday Parade. We are the Ocean. Madina Lake.

When I booked this I wondered if it was bad form to be going to a gig purely to see one of the support acts. I think it's pretty bad planning if the doors open at 7 and the first band on starts at 7.10. Particularly if the queue goes the whole way round the block and most people miss the whole of Adelaide. I was a little grumpy about that, it surely could have been avoided.

Thankfully, we made it in with minutes to spare for Mayday Parade. And I sang my little socks off, danced as much as possible and thoroughly enjoyed the goosebumps shooting through my body from this lovely band. I mean, honestly, with song titles like 'If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?' it's so easy to love them. They kept things lively, which meant I didn't get a couple of my faves, but it fitted the gig well and the crowd loved it. In my opinion, they should have had higher billing. They had flown over from the US afterall.

We Are The Ocean. I really don't know what to say about them. Neither of us knew who they were, although they were a local band by the sound of things. The guitarist had a great voice and led most of the songs, I liked his sound a lot. The other singer seemed more content screaming. Ruined it for me, I wasn't sure at all, but I'll go and have a listen to some of their recorded stuff, I suspect it's better than it was live.

Finally, the headliners, Madina Lake. I had gone some way to listen to their album on Spotify knowing that I was going to their gig. The songs I knew, I really enjoyed. A lot. The ones I didn't, not so much. They all have a bit of an out of space theme, which is quite funky. Highlights for me were Never Take Us Alive (the first song, kicked their set off nicely), Let's Get Outta Here and Welcome to Oblivion. They clearly put some thought into it, there were huge balloons at one point and streamers during another. Good fun, but wish I'd known more of the songs. The sound wasn't the best at times, but perhaps that was my hearing. I've seen a recording on youtube since and it sounds better than I remember.

Not too often that we get US bands that I quite like over here, so I'm pretty chuffed that I managed to see two in one go. I'll keep my fingers crossed for a Mayday Parade headline gig here at some point, I think they are definitely good enough and have a pretty loyal fanbase building over here.