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Aurota stepped up confidently to open the third heat, and although looking very much 'together' as a band, their image did nothing to hint at their influences. The quartet are strongly influenced by Muse with an expressive singer who breaks into a unique, paranoid wail on more than one occasion, and heavy guitars laid over dancey, eighties drumbeats. Oh, and their short, melodic, instrumental encore almost brought the house down. Brown Ring promise a world of rock and roll cliche, from the smoke machines to the eerie entrance scene, and ultimately deliver a good show - but nothing groundbreaking. The guitarist and bassist are a complete contrast, the lead stood calm and quiet, the other staring out the crowd and creeping round the stage striking 'rock star' poses while the familiar drummer (last seen winning this competition last year with Treehouse 3) narrates the lyrics with a crunching, monotone growl. Effective Just Like Her are a hectic, American punk trio who provided a welcome change to the heavy rock topic of the evening. However, the band often found themselves too fast to stay in time with each other and had only mixed success with their changes of pace, which are far too regular to be continually effective. The style of the two front men grows on you and becomes, comically, quite charming, and the band write some potentially catchy punk tunes. Sadly, they fall down musically in both depth and, dare I say it, ability. So far there seems to have been a complete star of every heat, and the trend was continued here with Forenzic. The five-piece blues-metal funksters included a mad, lanky dancer in baggy clothes with a tambourine, with the whole band swaggering and skipping along to every song. If Aurota were 'together', then Forenzic commanded the whole arena, filling the stage and capturing the audience with their huge range of sounds, swinging from nu-metal to hip-hop through rap and back to grunge - whilst still sounding ridiculously original. PRODUCED
IN ASSOCIATION WITH 'ROUGH SKETCH' |