Shinedown – Brixton Academy 2008

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At first look this tour seems a strange one for Jacksonville’s Shinedown to undertake. Their latest album, The Sound of Madness, has been out in North America since June, but remains unreleased in Europe until next year.

However, what this tour should achieve, supporting someone as popular as Disturbed, is to set them up for their own tour when the album is released in early 2009; to whet appetites and turn new heads. And with a performance like the one this night in London, they should have no trouble securing venues.

Of the eight tracks they managed to fit into their 35-minute set, six came from the new album, and proved to all be much stronger than the two older songs Save Me and Fly From The Inside. And much more varied too. While the old pair are reasonably ordinary melodic alt-rock, new directions like the southern groove of Sound of Madness and the heavy tone of Devour show a band maturing in both their writing and playing.

A few ill-advised Status Quo-esque synchronised stage moves aside, the performance as superb and echoed Brent Smith’s sentiments as he thanked the crowd, which clearly contained an appreciable number of Shinedown fans, for giving them the chance to play a large venue in London, something he said they’d been waiting their whole career so far to do. The level of energy they had as they were obviously having on stage was immense, and over the course of the set it was obviously winning a lot of people over. The cheers they were getting at the end of each song would have been appreciate by many headline acts, let alone the support.

Hopefully this tour will have the desired effect and the first quarter of 2009 will see a Shinedown tour coming to venues like the Astoria once the album has arrived. They certainly managed to appeal to the Disturbed fans in London, so if they’ve managed the same level of potential conversion on other stops they should be set.

“ a band maturing ”

Setlist: Devour / Cry For Help / Cyanide Sweet Tooth Suicide / Second Chance / Save Me / Sound of Madness / Sins With A Grin / Fly From The Inside

Written by Andy Lye
More: Alternative, Gigs, Shinedown