The winners of the opening slot on the Flogging Molly/Bronx/Face To Face tour are...
The third annual run of Fireball’s Fuelling The Fire Tour is set to return in December, which is clearly A Very Good Thing Indeed. The punk-tastic, K!-sponsored jaunt features some of the finest talent from across the Atlantic, with Flogging Molly, The Bronx and Face To Face heading up the bill.
Fireball are also keen to get homegrown talent involved however, which is why you’ll also get to see Glasgow’s own Lost In Stereo across the tour and a local opener at each show hand-picked by an elite squad of frontline music business ninjas. Oh, and representatives of this very publication.
Lost In Stereo were the winners of Fireball’s Hottest Band 2018 and all the regional winners from the current crop will also get the chance to be declared Hottest Band 2019 and play the whole of next year’s tour.
The openers for the Manchester and Sheffield dates were decided last week in a five-way head to head clash at Sheffield’s O2 Academy.
W.O.R.M., Counting Coins and Deadset Dream were vying for the opening slot at the Fuelling The Fire Tour to be held right there are the Sheffield O2 Academy on December 10. The Human Project and Without Andrew, meanwhile, were duking it out for the right to open the preceding night’s show, at the Manchester O2 Ritz on December 9.
Chesterfield’s W.O.R.M. were first to take to the stage and did a great job with their hobnailed collection of hobnailed street-punk riffs and holler-along hooks. Think Snuff or The Dropkick Murphys without the Celtic embellishments and you’d be in the right sort of litter-strewn, weed-choked ballpark. They also had one song with a refrain of ‘Fuck you’, which was nice.
Counting Coins from Hull were more eclectic, not to mention electric, with a genre-hopping mash-up of ska, punk, gypsy grooves and hip-hop. There was so much going on it was almost too much to take in but somehow they managed to shape the chaos into a coherent if incredibly frantic whole.
Sheffield’s own Deadset Dream definitely had the hometown heroes thing going on, with a huge response from the crowd. You can certainly see their expertly crafted mix of alt.rock riffs and soaring melodies going on to greater things.
Moving on to the band competing for the Manchester slot, we had The Human Project, who reminded us a little bit of fellow Leeds band Hawk Eyes. Not that the two sound the same but there’s certainly a similar propensity for tech-punk aggression and a feeling that they could twist it into strange new shapes at any point.
And finally we had Without Andrew from Manchester. We’re not sure where Andrew was precisely but he missed a corker, as the band lobbed out one raucous three-chord singalong after another. Genre greats like Green Day and The Ramones leaped to mind and it’s hard to argue with a band whose last single was called Fuck You! You’re A Racist.
The evening’s proceedings were brought almost to a sticky conclusion with a headlining set by Sweet Little Machine, who had previously won the inaugural competition to be named Fireball’s Hottest Band 2017. You can see why, as their overdriven pop-punk tunage is an absolute riot.
The quality on display has been of the very highest calibre throughout in fact, but there can be only one winner for each date.
And the winners were…(DRUM ROLL PLEASE)…Counting Coins and The Human Project!
We’re sure that both will storm that opening slot at their respective dates so make sure you get there early and we’ll see you down the front!
Paul Travers
