The Enemy / Kid British / Twisted Wheel

Thursday night saw The Enemy storm into Exeter to play the university's Great Hall. The opening acts Kid British and Twisted Wheel provided the few people that weren't in the bar with a decent, solid offering of songs before The Enemy took to the stage.

The Enemy's debut album 'We'll Live and Die In These Towns' contained a top five single and, critical acclaim and gathered them an army of fans across the Uk. These fans filled the sold-out venue in anticipation of hearing the bands anthemic indie-punkish first album songs and eagerly awaited new material. The average man in the audience, and it was almost completely men, was middle aged, fat and balding. The kind of beer drinking rock lover you would meet at an Oasis gig or watching the football on the plasma screen in a pub. As fans go though they appeared to be loyal and passionate about these relative newcomers.

The band swaggered onto the stage with the all the self-confidence of angry youths who have, in their own eyes, broken free from the apathetic lives that surrounded them in their hometown of Coventry and burst into life loudly and ultimately very badly. The sound was terrible, the rhythm guitar loud, too loud and the vocals quiet. The energy of the of the opening songs such as 'Aggro' and 'Pressure' and the gusto in which they played them just about kept it watchable but little more.

About five songs into the set and a guitar change and suddenly the sound improved. It's not perfect but it's massively better. Tom Clarke's vocals became audible and his sneering, angry voice began to incite the crowd into a little more movement. Then they started to pull out the more anthemic songs on the album, which is actually a big percentage of their material. Prompted by Clarke the audience start to sing and Clarke stops his singing on the chorus of tracks such as 'Away From Here' and 'We'll Live and Die In These Towns' to enjoy the rock and roll moment of having thousands of adoring fans screaming his words.

The Enemy's forthcoming single 'No Time For Tears' gets taken out for test run and doesn't seem like a deviation from the debut's indie-punk formula. It is perhaps another step in the direction towards commercialism but nevertheless a great song and one the fans will no doubt buy as they appeared to take to it almost as much as past singles.

After playing almost all of the songs the crowd know and a few others they leave the stage to a strangely average applause given how much the fans were singing to the songs and the noise for the encore is slow coming. Maybe it was because they know The Enemy will play a couple more but maybe because they really don't care. Eventually there is enough vocal momentum from the audience to bring them back and they play a couple more. It was all very rock and roll but not amazing. This was however, just one night in what is likely to be a much longer career of making some great songs. A little disappointing but not a total loss.

FUTURE GIGS