It is a cold night as we arrive at the Old Wharf in Birmingham ready for the show, everyone loads their equipment into the intimate venue and the sound is set up ready for the music to begin.

First on stage is “A Day Too Late” they do a great acoustic set that includes Jay and Jack changing between a duo and also Jay doing a couple of tracks on his own. Their voices work well together and compliment each other perfectly. The crowd seem to be enjoying the evening so far.

Jay sings a song in memory of his sister who sadly passed away 4 years ago, while he is singing the room is silent and they are hanging onto every word. His voice is very powerful for such a young person and has matured a lot since we first saw him perform over 2 years ago.

A quick change over brings Nik Parkinson to the stage for a couple of songs. He starts by singing Happy Birthday to Jay and then sings an old favourite “Lullabies”, as his voice blasts out it fills the whole building and makes people stop what they are doing as they are transfixed by his voice. Members of his family are here tonight and many of them have not heard him sing live acoustically before and by the looks on their faces we would say they are loving it.

After huge cheers and clapping he sings his final song “Rollover”, this is a mellow and very soulful track that makes the audience grab hold of a loved one and sway along as they listen to his fantastic voice. This has definitely been one of those sets that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. We hope to see much more of his acoustic work over the coming months.

Next to the stage we have “My Lost Weekend” who are also doing an acoustic set tonight. They are joined by Jay for a couple of tracks and his voice blends well with that of Phil. We have only ever seen them play ‘plugged in’ before and this was a nice twist as it shows they have true vocal and musical abilities.

The evening moves up a notch now as we get plugged in ready to rock with “Eternal Ordeal” their heavy sound makes the room vibrate as Brad starts singing and the guitars powerful rifts bounce around . Their style is unusual for such a young band, it has the old school stadium rock sound with a modern metal twist, a friend of ours from Holland calls it ‘Faggot Rock’ and that is how we will continue to describe Eternal Ordeal. Please don’t go thinking that this is in any way an insult as their music is incredibly entertaining and we thoroughly enjoyed the performance.

Woodstock even got down into the crowd and played his bass at one point which was great to watch as the guitars of Jay and Ant continue to scream out and Dan beats his drums to within an inch of death, as they go through their set. Brad has a great stage presence and is a true performer as he raises his fist and punches the air while singing, his voice works really well with Jays backing vocals.

There are obviously lots of their fans here tonight as they are singing along to each track, heads were bouncing up and down and the crowd were going mental jumping and dancing around. I think we will continue to hear good things about this band as they can only go from strength to strength.

Tonight’s headliners are “Day Of Rising” who have travelled up from London to play tonight. There is hardly enough room on the small stage for their show as they are well known for spinning around and jumping all over the place, but with a few carefully choreographed moves they cope well.
They play a couple of songs from their EP ‘Unmasking St. Minver’ including the fantastic ‘Destroying Dialogues’ and ‘March’ as well as the 2 new tracks they recently recorded ‘Olympia’ and ‘Phoenix Inc’ , all of these go down well with the eager crowd.

This band has an awesome stage presence and all 4 of them work so well together to produce a really tight set. There appears to be no ‘lead’ singer as Oscar, Javier and Roberto all seem to share the vocals for each song, thus creating a pretty unique sound. Everyone is still having lots of fun dancing and jumping around the venue and Nik even lets Jay play a few notes on his bass during the last track before Oscar and Javier dive from the stage to finish the song while being engulfed by the eager crowd.

This may be the first time that Day Of Rising have played in Birmingham, but judging by the reception they have received, it certainly will not be their last.