The Horrors - Rock City, Nottingham Live Review 2011

On paper, The Horrors are flying. Their second album 'Primary Colors' was a total change in direction for the band but not in a way that they sold their souls and went all commercial. Instead, The Horrors channeled their raw energy and came up with a great second album. This gained the band a following but the best was still yet to come, in the shape of their third album, making it third time lucky with 'Skiing'. It was as if the guys hit gold!

Anyhow, with these two awesome albums and appearing on the likes of Live with Jools Holland, The Horrors are currently on a headline UK tour. Next stop Rock City, Nottingham, although it was actually planned to be Rescue Rooms - a smaller venue - but due to the demand the show was moved to Rock City, which is probably one of the more fitting venues for The Horrors. A venue where you can make the atmosphere into your own, this is a band that certainly uses atmospheric scenes to add to their music; dark and smoky is always a good starting point.

Tonight the Nottingham crowd seemed a bit subdued when the band banged out their opening tunes - or actually it should be said that when The Horrors banged out tracks such as 'Changing The Rain' and 'Who Can Say', you would have expected a mad response but there wasn't much around. What was good to see was that Faris obviously felt the same way and started talking to the crowd, asking if they were alright.

And then the opening chords of 'I Can See Through You'; and Rock City was buzzing and everything was bouncing - now the night had begun! It seemed that this was the turning point. Maybe it was just down to the fact that half of the people there just didn't know what to expect from The Horrors. You have got to hand it to them, though - they picked it up and were shaping up to put on a brilliant show.

The whole place was 'Rocking'; it just seemed that the band were proving the crowd with plenty of ammo to go crazy to; with tracks such as 'Three Decades' 'Endless Blue' and not forgetting 'Sea Within A Sea'.

The encore was truly a gem with 'Mirror's Image' kicking it off with their return but the absolute diamond had to be 'Moving Further Away', which lasted over ten minutes, the band just carried on and on! The sad thing (or good thing, depending on how you looked at it) was that half of the crowd didn't know what was coming, because with a click of your fingers, mayhem had appeared: moshing and bashing and bumping into everyone and anyone. This was disorganized mayhem for a truly brilliant song.

The thing about The Horrors is that they are growing quicker than the national debt and you only hope that they stick around and stay playing at venues like Rock City, because in short if these guys embark on an arena tour it will be the death of more music. This band were born to play in venues like Rock City, with grunge everywhere, sticky floors and the walls of the venue covered in beer. This right here has got to be currently one of the best bands that the UK has to offer; let's hope they don't get murdered by the hype.

4.5/5

Mark Moore