Soundwave Counter Revolution – Review

One hour until doors with everyone’s patience running short, eager punters were queuing at Luna Parks smiling entrance with BBM’s Gretchen Lee, trying to get out of the cold, wet rain.

Having missed out on openers We Are The Ocean, next to warm up the crowd were Terrible Things, whose lead singer was sure to tell us that he wrote some of Taking Back Sunday’s best tracks in case anyone didn’t know who they were. Playing a Led cover saw new people wandering over to check them out.

The Swellers were up next, ‘Runaways’ the first song off the block, taunting the audience to ‘Don’t fall asleep tonight’ and telling us to ‘Feel It’ as it was ‘The Best I Ever Had’. Plugs were sent to All Time Low and Set Your Goals. They were also adamant about the fact that these were REAL vocals, REAL guitars and REAL amps.

The only girl in the entire line-up was Taylor from We Are The In Crowd, New York. Plenty of bright lights, phones and jumping happened and they drew in a large crowd with arms swaying in the air during the rocking first track ‘Carry Me Home’.

Alesana disappointingly began with a playback intro and in their uniformed black outfits opened up a pit with fist pumps by the men from North Carolina however by the end of the set they had gotten my thumbs up.

Go Radio, got the crowd clapping then pulled out a track off an old EP ‘Thanks For Nothing’. A solo of ‘Goodnight Moon’, a great slow ballad had the crowd joining in on the lyrics. A good surprise was an Adele cover of ‘Rolling In The Deep’ played much to the crowds delight.

The Angry Boys theme played to begin Hellogoodbye’s set. Seeing Jen Okazaki in the crowd gave them props, they even gave a shout out to Smouse and Gran and dedicated a track to Daniel and Nathan. ‘Here In Your Arms’ a crowd favourite played as well as ‘Shimmy Shimmy Quarter Turn’. These guys were my personal favourites.

As the crowd dissipated, Make Do & Mend took to the stage, formally announcing they weren’t going to make people pay to meet them, and they also announced a free acoustic set at Resist to promote their new album on 3wise. ‘Night’s the Only Time Of Day’ played and their closer ‘To the Ones We Love’, was a shout out to Cute Is What We Aim For.

A large crowd was formed as super group The Damned Things took the stage, their first trip down-under welcomed brilliantly. ‘Handbook for the Recently Deceased’ and ‘A Great Reckoning’ played to the packed venue and they gave a shout-out to Terrible Things, as there seemed to be a lot of THINGS at this festival. ‘Ironiclast’ saw head banging, then of course a plug for Every Time I Die at the Manning and Set Your Goals. They told the crowd to get horny, pretending it was ‘Friday Night’ for a screaming great end.

My absolute favourites, Funeral For A Friend created a circle pit and a wall to start off as well as apologising for bringing the rain from Wales and not having enough songs to play. Giving props to all their awesome buds on the line-up as well as thanking those who came to their signing, they lit the crowd up and filled the floor. Asking the audience about which tracks they wanted, they realised they were old as they’ve been here for ten years so they decided to skip that idea pretty quick and moved on. The moshing was too much for some and two fans were escorted out of the pit by security.

As the crowd moved left Set Your Goals took the stage with a circle pit created for ‘Echoes’, they played a very up-beat ‘Summer Jam’ with lots of crowd bouncing and dedicated ‘The Fallen’ to The Swellers.

Story of the Year played next with plenty of shout-outs and teasing for their mates Yellowcard who were signing autographs.

Then Face To Face, the punk rockers from days of old, played from their album ‘Laugh Now Laugh Later’ with tracks, ‘It’s Not All About You’ and ‘All For Nothing’ urging the audience to ‘Go Run In Circles or Something’, they drew in a small but energetic crowd.

Yellowcard played a tonne of favourites like ‘Ocean Avenue’ and even featured a surprise violin solo. Not being down under since 07, the crowd was lapping up their rocking set.

Young Guns, the only Brits in the pack took to the hardcore side of things, with a new track seeing a bunch of movement and head butting.

All Time Low played a colourful set and songs like ‘Dear Maria, Count Me In, ‘Lost In Stereo’ and ‘Coffee Shop Soundtrack’ saw people jumping around and throwing bras on stage. Many shouts from audience members for Alex to take his shirt off saw his retort of ‘perverts’. They definitely did not disappoint.

Then the almighty D.R.U.G.S were up. They clearly wanted people to be drenched in sweat and deaf by the end of the night. They played tracks off their first album, while Matt Good’s arm waving controlled the crowd.

Panic! At The Disco, tore jeans, lost shirts and gained the entire crowd’s attention before they even started with ‘Let’s Kill Tonight’. Playing crowd favourites like ‘The Ballad Of Mona Lisa’, ‘Camisado’, ‘The Only Diffference Between Martyrdom’ and ‘Suicide Is Press Coverage’ and thanking his awesome Mum saw the crowd roar. Covering The Darkness’s ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’ saw lead Brendon taking up the guitar. Ending with ‘Goodbye’ left the crowd still craving more.

Despite a rather rough and cold start to the day, the Big Top provided the crowd with much warmth and 12 hours of non-stop live music.