Scary kids impress the kids
All three Manchester Academy venues are an excellent way to witness live music. They book very diverse acts of varying stature, the tickets are always affordable and they're properly policed. Sometimes, however, they do some unfathomable things. Their insistence of every punter having to sign in at the door caused long queues for the recent Opeth gig and although they relinquished this futile pursuit they only opened the doors at 7.30pm and with the evening's openers Scary Kids Scaring Kids due on stage at 7.45pm this didn't allow a lot of time to get the mass of people through the door and up the stairs. As a consequence I missed the first half of the 'Kids' set because I was stood queuing with the other several hundred down Oxford Road.
Public logistic problems aside, six-piece Scary Kids Scaring Kids were a perfect compliment to the evenings headliners Bullet for my Valentine. They play the widdly-harmonised riff, screamo/clean vocal trick like so many bands around today, however Scary Kids arguably do it better than most. They are of the ilk, 'if you can't be original then be as good as you can with the style of music you're playing'. There are some catchy ideas on offer with their single 'The Only Medicine' coming across as the highlight of their set. Vocalist Tyson was a little low in the mix, however he didn't help matters by using an exaggerated microphone technique causing many words and phrases to be lost behind the sonic assault. The banter was led by extrovert keyboardist Pouyan whose manic antics were of a man with two wet fingers firmly lodged in a live socket. It's always difficult for metal keyboard players to rock out and look convincing but Pouyan was a joy to watch as he added his subtle keyboard and piano parts before launching into controlled fits. If only he'd have some knives to stab his keyboard with then he may have even rivalled the great Keith Emerson.
A polished performance by the band won over some kids eager for some new metal and their similarity with the evening's headliners one can only hope they vested some interest in terms of merchandise sales. In an already cluttered scene it's difficult to know if Scary Kids will have much of an impact, if they were around at the inception of this sub genre then I would consider them to have a bright future, but at the moment they're just another band, albeit quite a good one.