After playing three sold-out Knotfest Australia shows, Story Of The Year is tonight at Sydney’s Crowbar playing their own sold-out side show. First on stage warming up the crowd were local up and comers Bellwether and Melbourne band The Last Martyr. Both did their best to win over the crowd, but tonight was all about Story Of The Year.
Elder emos filled the sweaty Crowbar band room to capacity awaiting the arrival of their heroes. The band burst on stage like a fireball of ferocious energy kicking things off with ‘Tear Me to Pieces’, the title track from their new album, before giving us a nostalgia hit with ‘In The Shadows’ from their seminal album Page Avenue.
What followed was undeniably a memorable night for both the band and Sydney crowd. With the band having to leave Australia and fly to Bangkok the next day, SOTY clearly wanted to go out with a bang – and they weren’t here to fuck spiders! The set list featured quite a few tracks from their new album and with vocalist Dan Marsala explaining how proud they are of it. With many of the crowd in full voice for the new songs, it was evident that SOTY fans are die-hard as ever. The show had all the elements to make up an amazing show; passionate, vocal fans, a circle pit, crowd surfers and even a guy from the audience getting on stage to do a shoey of Jamieson.
The band clearly enjoyed their time in Australia, revealing they got to try the Aussie delicacy of a Golden Gaytime today and loved it. Dan also admitted it seemed an odd choice to have their band play Knotfest amongst all the Heavy Metal acts, but wouldn’t pass up a chance to play down under. As the main set concluded with ‘Is This My Fate?’ from their 2005 album In the Wake of Determination.
Of course it wasn’t the end, as the band did a pretend walk-off to play the encore. Starting their reprise with ‘And The Hero Will Drown’, they then played an unexpected emo covers set including ‘Ocean Avenue’ by Yellowcard, ‘Cute Without The E’ from Taking Back Sunday, ‘I’m Not Okay (I Promise) by My Chemical Romance and ‘The Taste of Ink’ by The Used. With all tracks sounding as good as if the band had written them, as they sent the crowd down a black-hearted memory lane. The final song of the night was the anthemic ‘Until The Day I Die’ giving us all one last chance to scream our lungs out.
This reviewer was lucky enough to see SOTY at When We Were Young Festival last year. Also I’ve seen them play other iconic Sydney venues like Big Top, Roundhouse and The Metro, but seeing them in the intimate setting of Crowbar was something truly special. It might only be March, but tonight in Sydney, Story Of The Year gave us the gig of the year! With a solid new album and this year being the 20th anniversary of Page Avenue we hope they will be back in Australia soon.
(Photos by Christian Ross)
