Hit The Deck Festival 2015

Nottingham

by Daniel King - reviews

&

James Salt - review and pictures

The claim to be the UK's 'premier indoor music festival' was almost enough to get us to Hit The Deck 2015, but when you add a lineup including Cancer Bats and Skindred and our minds were made up...we had to be there!

And there we were. We saw some awesome bands and managed to have a chat with some of them.

Opening the main stage in the main room of Rock City were When We Were Wolves. Taking on what is probably the hardest slot of the day (midday set combined with a lack of boozed up metalheads), they set about their 30 minute slot with a professionalism that is rare in a young and, lets face it, relatively unknown band. The crowd steadily built throughout their set and by the end they had them hooked. WWWW on this showing are a band for the future and with tracks like Dying On The Inside they should have no problem making 2015 a year to remember!

Overall this was a much better start to the day than I was expecting - 7/10

Idiom were up next on the main stage at Rock City and, behind what can only be called a free for all for photographers, they put on a supremely composed set - using the While She Sleeps gear after leaving theirs in Bristol the night before. Kudos to them on being tight throughout and they looked completely at home on the big stage. The crowd had grown nicely in size for these guys and they were treated to a set that was spot on from the sound to the set list (the inclusion of a California Love cover was pure genius!).

This day just keeps getting better - 7.5/10

Over in the Basement Bad Sign were getting ready to take to the stage. The awkward thing with the way Hit The Deck is run is that the Rock City stage and the Basement stage alternate, meaning bands tend to open their set to around 5 people. Luckily though, the room filled up nicely for this excellent little band and they opened with Confessions (a personal favourite here at MNN since we reviewed their EP). From here the crowd were hooked, and rightly so, vocalist Joe Appleford holding everyone's attention with his solky tones. Hitting high notes with relative ease, notes not touched by most men since they were around 11.

If you're not familiar with these guys, you need to get familiar! 8/10

After Bad Sign we had to trundle off to the press room to do a couple of interviews and then a cheeky pint and burger went down incredibly well before heading back to the Basement for a bit of Black Peaks. Unfortunately, they weren't quite able to reach the standards set in the early afternoon session. They seemed to be a little off form, maybe due to the lack of sound check? They seemed to suffer early on trying to get everything into place. Overall, they are a band I would like to see again at their own show, with a set up that suits them.

If you didn't enjoy them here, check out their music and see them at their own show - 4/10

A quick trip over to the main room in Rock City saw a crowd growing already. That can only mean one of two things, free beer or Cancer Bats were coming on soon. There was no free beer, I checked. There was the imminent arrival of Cancer Bats though.

For the first time all day there was a buzz in the air. An anticipation of what was to come. A well founded anticipation too as those crazy Bats put on what must be one of their most impressive UK performances to date. First things first, the setlist was incredible, the tracks from Searching For Zero slotted nicely around the 'hits' and thankfully there was still room for their excellent cover of the Beastie Boys track 'Sabotage'.

Opener Arsenic In The Year Of The Snake was delivered with a venom that you would think could be lacking at a festival show popped into the middle of a UK tour. Nothing was lacking here though, Liam Cormier oozes a charisma that must make him one of the most easily likeable frontmen in metal. It's not just him though, Scott Middleton is one of the most underappreciated guitarists in the business and Jaye R Schwarzer & Mike Peters go about their business in a way that allows Liam the freedom to do his thing.

What was really impressive about this set was how within a matter of seconds of they picked the biggest crowd of the day up and 45 minutes later they were still up, pulled along by the locomotive that is the Cancer Bats. There is literally nothing that could have improved this set - 10\10

Following an absolutely triumphant performance by Cancer Bats, tour mates While She Sleeps hit the main stage at Rock City knowing full well that the measuring stick has just been set at a significant height...and unfortunately they weren't quite able to reach the mark that the Canadian quartet set before them, but they gave it one hell of a go.

Opening their show with "New World Torture" they start off a bit nervous, the sound is murky and full of bass, almost too much bass destroying the ear drums of the front row. There's a similar pattern with the second song "Brainwashed" too, as the bass is almost enough to drown out Loz's screams, and there's barely a riff to be heard.

Luckily by the time they let rip into "This Is The Six" everything begins to come together, sounding much more crisp, the band look like they're having fun on stage and the crowd are absolutely lapping it up. Diving all over and into each other. "Seven Hills" , "Our Courage, Our Cancer" and "Our Legacy" sound huge, the kids in the crowd singing along to every word and the band, bleached in red lights, are jumping about the stage like grasshoppers on acid.

Closing on "Four Walls" is a sensible choice, the pit is the size of the room and Loz along with bassist Aaran take every opportunity they can to dive in there.

Although they began with a few sound issues, there wasn't that much wrong with the WSS set. They were just unable to match the quality and perfection set by the Bats before them. It seems that Hit The Deck got the billing of Cancer Bats and While She Sleeps the wrong way round, but the crowd loved every second and for the band on stage, that is the most important thing - 8/10

Black, white, gay, straight, no one unifies a crowd like Skindred. Barely anyone left after While She Sleeps left the stage, eager to keep their spots for the days headliners (who we'd managed to nail down for a chat earlier in the day). There is something of an inevitability about a Skindred set these days. I don't mean that in a bad way, you're guaranteed some massive songs, you're guaranteed to laugh and you're guaranteed to be able to take your t-shirt off and wave it around your head like you're Ryan Giggs scoring against Arsenal in an FA Cup semi-final in 1999 (come back soccerball haters, that's the last mention in this article!!).

With five albums stretching across a 17 year career for the Welsh rockers, headlining an event like his has been a long time coming and they waste no time in showing they deserve their billing. Bursting straight into the title track of their latest album, Kill The Power, they have the crowd singing along, boucing along and completely and utterly in the palm of their hands.

It says a lot about a band when you just can't take your eyes off the frontman and with Skindred that is exactly what happens. Completing the first few songs in a coat that Live Nation promotor Andy Copping believes looks like something from Game Of Thrones, Benji Webbe demands your attention throughout, aside from the odd jab at DJ Fuckface and his hatred of all things metal.

Taking in tracks from Babylon, Roots Rock Riot and Union Black as well as a few from Kill The Power, it is easy to forget which track is from which, such is then strength of the Skindred 'brand'. I often though that Skindred were up there with The BossHoss and Bowling For Soup as the best mid afternoon, beer in hand, festival bands, but this set changed my mind. Skindred are an 'anytime, anywhere' band. They have reached the top of the 'UK's premier indoor music festival' and there's only one way for them from here.

After the Newport 'Copter accompanied final track Warning, the band left the stage together with 'Nobody does it better, baby you're the best' ringing out of the PA system. Whilst they weren't the best band on the lineup, it took a superhuman set from the Cancer Bats to win that title - 9/10