Amen - Norwich, Waterfront - 14.04.04

This was Amen’s first ever gig in Norwich as the headlining act, and it becomes quite obvious, quite soon, that the demand was extremely high for them to come to Norwich as the headlining act. Fans queued from the venue round to the nearest pub [the ferryboat] in anticipation for the band they have wanted to see for a long, long time. And when about half the queue had got into the venue, opening band Minus came on stage at an unforgivably early time. Unforgivably because, Minus proved why they are the latest band to rave about by giving a blistering performance. They gave it there all in a set that had that extra notch, that extra dimension, and that extra beat just to throw the audience off course, but not too off course, which as a result had everyone in their presence nodding their heads in appreciation. Halfway through the set Minus’s vocalist, Krummi, decided to stripe off and go topless with a few wolf cry’s as the initial response, but, and I’m sure this is purely co-incidental, the songs played after this action seemed mediocre at best, and a lot of interest was lost from the opening tracks that had everybody listening. Unfortunately, they seemed to lose momentum and not give as good a performance as what they started with. So, next up were Ikara Colt, who seemed to have quite a lot of people who had come to see them who were totally different from the lot who came to see Minus. Suddenly the pit changed to a groovy dancing frenzy. But for everyone else, failed to make hardly any impression as they got a poor response all over, which is a shame as they gave a reasonably good performance, but a lot of the tracks sounded pretty similar, and overall they probably weren't the best option for touring with the punk/metal fury that Amen and Minus can provide. And of course, Amen failed to disappoint. They came on with ringing out feed-back and harmonics to make the fans go crazy without even doing anything. And then it began, and all it took was for Casey to walk on stage (several moments after the rest of the band), grab a mic, and everyone was screaming desperately back at him "Bring Me the Heads of Rowan Polanski/Bring the Legs of Fred Astaire" and the whole venue erupted with music and madness. It was quite a scene, but then what would you expect from such a highly acclaimed band who have successfully fused together Metal and Punk at last. And they didn’t stop there, stringing two more tracks into their intro before Casey dared speak to the fans. So as soon as "Bring Me the Heads..." was over, the harmonic feed-back mess that remained quickly turned into “Coma America” and a similar response as before was given. Coma America of course being their first, real recognisable radio-[un]friendly tune, and absolutely everyone jumping in a wonderfully flowing kinetic energy and shouting "What Am I?" several times with Casey that familiar clutter of noise started again. However, the final track of the introducing songs played by the band was CK Killer, a 1minute 58 second burst of punk, so it wasn't too long until the fans finally got a break. A couple of tracks later the screams were louder than the ever familiar feed back outburst, as in unison the whole scene came to a standstill all singing “Its just a holiday for you, another holiday for you” as The Price of Reality was played, surprisingly early in the set, to a response that couldn’t of been enhanced nether-the-less. And as the track came to a close with the choruses of "Revolt!" from both Casey and fans, Casey charmingly asked "what do you fucking cunts want to hear?" The response? 'The Waiting 18', 'Whores of Hollywood', 'Piss Virus' and 'Justified'. This was indeed, the fans show. Amen then progressed into featuring new material, which still had just a good response from the fans as the other songs in the set. The band themselves looked so comfortable onstage and performing, it really was a big spontaneous, flowing "fuck-off" of noise to all the rumours saying that Amen were in jeopardy as they thrashed out Hello (One Chord Lovers), The Abolishment of Luxury, Money infection and Neutron Liars. There really seems like there is no stopping this band, they have quite possibly one of the strongest fan-bases in the world, which the band often help with, particularly guitarist Rich Jones, who when Casey demanded we should give our appreciation to him, there was no hesitation of applauds when he began the opening guitar riff of "Mayday". Soon it was time for that clichéd 'go on tour and play commercial single near the end of the set time' but when it was Amen doing it, it was just as brilliantly performed as any other track, and “California’s Bleeding” had no real more significance than any other tracks played. To end the main part of the set was the ingeniously catchy and melodic "Under the Robe" which, despite most of the crowd was suffering from exhaustion, was sung to probably more than any other song played that evening. So, the crowd finally got a slight break, which all the way through were chants of "Fuck Amen! Fuck Amen!", and "Fuck Amen!" They came back roaring to go with a cover of The Stooges classic "I Wanna Be Your Dog", sang by Pig. And regardless of that only half of the audience knew what they were playing, it still went down a treat. However, the finale was possibly the best track they could play. A tremendously whimsical performance of "Here's The Poison" which again had all the wonderful energy flowing to make it as if the show would never end, or at least for a few days in the result of ears ringing. This was an outstanding performance by Amen, truly something special. It was a very loud and clear message that Amen is indeed here to stay, and if you don't like it, fuck off. Adam Turner-Heffer