Page 53 - Black Velvet Issue 84

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YELLOWCARD / LESS THAN JAKE / CHUNK!
NO, CAPTAIN CHUNK! – BIRMINGHAM O2
ACADEMY, 05.03.15
Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! are definitely hard-working
go-getters. A little like UK band Decade, they’re managing to
get slots on lots of good tours. Last time we caught Chunk!
No, Captain Chunk! they were opening for New Found Glory.
Being part pop-punk means they can slither their way onto
pop-punk tours – although they’re only part pop-punk, the
other part is metalcore. The pros for Chunk! No, Captain
Chunk! are that they are a tight band and sound like they’ve
definitely done a lot of practicing. They have their set per-
fected. The cons are that if you’re not a massive fan of met-
alcore then the growling roars get a bit tedious. At some point
in the future there’ll be a time when Chunk! No, Captain
Chunk do choose which way they’re venturing – either the
melodic, poppy route – or the heavy route. At the moment
the fact that they’re straddling the two genres is their down-
fall. They still have their cover of ‘All Star’ (Smash Mouth) in
the set, which is the highlight for us, while they end with ‘In
Friends We Trust’. And we trust we’ll be seeing Chunk! No,
Captain Chunk! again in 2015.
Less Than Jake have added a funny new intro to their
set since their last UK tour. It’s a theatre-style announcement
asking you to refrain from taking photos ‘because social
media sucks and your pictures will likely come out crappy
and blurry’. Drinking and ‘losing your fucking mind’ however
are encouraged. The band open with a fan favourite, ‘Look
What Happened’, and then another, the lively ‘Nervous In
The Alley’. Although to be fair, most Less Than Jake songs
are favourites. Tonight, like the intro, the band make their set
a lot of fun, joking in between songs. They start off telling the
crowd that they’ve been voted the 67th most handsome band
of over 35s. They have some smoke machines at the back
of the stage that blast out smoke once in a while while part
way through the set there are toilet roll blowers which blows
a ton of toilet roll into the crowd. They also send out a few
Less Than Jake balloons. They ask for a couple of over-
weight male fans to get on stage for one song – although can
only see one overweight guy – as we’re just too healthy and
fit, so manage with just one. They get a girl on stage who
then has to give the male fan (Jack) a lap dance. They play
a tune they say is for a Pac-man cereal commercial. In total,
the band play for an hour and ten minutes. This includes an
encore which ends with the legendary ‘All My Best Friends
Are Metalheads’. It’s a total headline set and by the end of
their set you feel like you’ve got your money’s worth and like
it’s the end of the night.
But it’s not as Yellowcard are the headliners in Birming-
ham. The two bands are co-headlining, one headlining one
day and the other the next. And tonight it’s Yellowcard’s turn.
The last time we saw Yellowcard and Less Than Jake tour
together in the UK was in 2004. 11 years later it’s great that
both bands are still alive and going strong (albeit with a
slightly different line-up) and that we still love them now as
much as we did back then. With this being the first tour since
the band released ‘Lift A Sail’, they obviously want to play a
few new songs. Frontman Ryan Key says at one point that
someone commented that they had a lot of new songs in the
set, so tonight they add a couple more old tunes to even
things out. “Are you prepared to wake up tomorrow unable
to speak?” he asks the crowd. New songs come in the form
of the first three songs of the set being the first three songs
from the new album. We also get the title track, ‘Make Me
So’ and ‘California’. Ryan talks about being proud of the
songs and loving to actually be able to play them live. They
sound great although we also adore their old songs. Songs
such as ‘Believe’, ‘Way Away’ and final song ‘Ocean Avenue’
were the songs that blew us away in the beginning and that
hit that spot in your heart that’s deep and always there. Noth-
ing can beat those classic tunes, that are vibrant, uplifting
and magical.
So Yellowcard start with the current and end with the past
– although we hope that they’ll still be around in the future
and for many years to come. Less Than Jake too.
YYYY
Shari Black Velvet

Top Left: Ryan Key (Yellowcard). Bottom Left: Less Than Jake
Photos By Shari Black Velvet
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