Hoobastank

support Three Days Grace
author PP date 28/10/04 venue The Forum, London, UK

My first time at The Forum (and the last if the headline is anything similar to Hoobastank that night). Imagine an old, 1800/early 1900 theater. That's what the forum is. It has been completely redone from the inside, but it still has that old look to it. So basically you've got quite a big mosh pit downstairs, and plenty of seats above it. Overall it can probably house about 4 to 5,000 people on a sold out night as this.

Three Days Grace

Now to the actual review. The warmup band - or should we say support band in this case - was nobody else than Three Days Grace from Toronto, Canada. Having topped the BillBoard modern rock chart with their megahit "I Hate Everything About You", they are enormous in North America. But in Europe they haven't managed to gain momentum yet, which is why they are supporting such crap live band as Hoobastank. But I gotta give them credit though. They did an excellent job in warming up the crowd. Everyone was already moshing during their set, and at the minimum half of the crowd knew the lyrics to their megahit.

If I should name one specific thing that struck me about Three Days Grace, it would be their guitarist. It literally seemed as if his guitar weighed less than 300 grams as he threw it all over the place while playing it. It looked fantastic. And I think his punk-style haircut contributed to it. Another thing I liked about Three Days Grace that after their gig, while Hoobastank was still pissing me off successfully, they actually were hanging out at the bar talking to their fans (those who felt disgusted by "The Reason").

7

Hoobastank

Well, I guess I have to talk a little bit about the headlining act as well. Hoobastank entered the stage and with the same unmistaken pattern played "Out of Control" as their first song just as they did 8 days before in Copenhagen, and two days before in Nottingham, and as they did in every god damn venue on their 'world tour'. Fair enough it got the crowd jumping a bit, I'll give that to them!

We heard all of the obvious songs such as "Crawling In The Dark" (which was the highlight of the gig) and "Running Away", "Ready For You" and of course the commercial popshit song "The Reason". Let me describe their sound a bit further: Their instruments were too loud in comparison to Doug's vocals, so at times it was difficult to hear him during verses. It got a bit better as the gig advanced but it was still terrible for a major act like Hoobastank.

Now to their stageshow. I don't think I've ever seen worse act in my life. I could swear to God that neither Markku nor Dan didn't tresspass the imaginary 1 meter by 1 meter square around them. They appeared to be nailed to the ground. Clearly, they aren't enjoying doing it. No wonder with the calibre of songs like "Disappear" and "The Reason".

Doug Robb tried to save the show by addressing the crowd relatively often but his big smiling face while giving out comments such as "I love you London. You guys are the best!" just made me feel like vomiting. Obviously, "The Reason" came after the encore. At this point, had I a bottle/can/glass/anything in my hand I would've thrown it at either Doug or Dan or Markku (hmm, hard choice as they were equally bad!). They deserved it for this commercial pop shit act they came up with. Whatever you do, don't go see it. It's just not worth the money.

Fair enough, the concert had it's moments during songs like "Crawling In The Dark", "Running Away" and "Better" but it was ruined by songs like "Disappear", "The Reason" and the others from the new album. A lot of the better songs from the first album such as "Too Little Too Late" and "Pieces" were missing completely.

I ended up leaving the gig before the encores finished only to be encountered outside by dozens of t-shirt salesmen. I asked one of them "2 for £5 and ill take them" as a joke and the answer I got "2 shirts for 5 quid? Get outta here." I sure as hell did.

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Setlist: (not accurate)

  • Out of Control
  • Running Away
  • The Reason
  • Crawling In The Dark
  • Better
  • Disappear
  • Ready For You
  • Never There
  • What Happened To Us?
  • Same Direction

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