Banging heads
The Morning After are a four piece metal band from Essex that you wouldn’t normally expect to find playing at midday but this is Download and nothing should come as a surprise!
The first thing you notice about The Morning After is that there seems to be a hell of a lot of posing and running around going on! It’s all part of the show though and to their credit they back it up with some nice dual guitar parts. Guitarist and vocalist Sam Ryder mixes up his vocals between gruff hardcore growls and high pitched classic metal wailing. Their roots are firmly in the 80s hair metal camp (starting with the backdrop) but they throw in enough contemporary moments to keep it interesting.
The crowd is probably two to three hundred strong and Ryder does his best to engage them, going down to the front rows and encouraging them to sing along. The drumming seems a little slack at times but overall it’s a good performance and they certainly do all they can to win over the crowd with some solid riffs and sing along choruses. During the last song Ryder launches himself into the crowd resulting in only a partially successful attempt at crowd surfing! Not bad at all really but do they have enough originality to really stand out? Time will tell.