At sunday the 4^th of March, Billy Talent was back in Holland! This time they came to promote their second album II which they have officially released recently in Holland. Unfortunately there was no release of the first album in our small country but the real fans obviously ordered it through internet.

 

When we arrived at the Melkweg I was amazed to see that there were so many little girls waiting in line. I know Billy Talent for a fairly long time, they exist for over 13 years. It is a punk rock band with their roots in hardcore. I was expecting a lot of old punk rockers, but instead I got the whole MySpace community. I was getting critical, what if they wouldn’t be as energetic as before? It happens often with a band when they get hyped.

 

Once inside Jeremy’s just started playing. Jeremy’s is a four piece skatepunk band with a female singer that knows how to play with the audience but not with her vocals. Already in the second song, she knows that her strongest point is that she’s a female, so she started to undress and revealed her bikini. It was a nice entertaining show they put up, but when she started to sing she played too much with her voice. Though, when they played a ballad you could hear that she is actually a good singer. As for the rest of the band; you can clearly see (and hear) that Fokko (guitar) is the driving engine behind all of this. He has some really nice backing vocals and one great solo. The drummer wasn’t too tight, neither was the bassist. This was clearly a last minute support act, because the actual support couldn’t come.

 

When Billy Talent showed up the crowd went wild. All the kids went up front when they opened with ‘How it Goes’, one of their top notch songs. It was really tight and I was amazed how the singer was able to keep almost exactly the same insane nasal voice as on the record. Also Ian D’Sa was playing on his guitar like a madman. His and Jon Gallant (bass) backing vocals were really crunchy and loud when Ben Kowalewicz’s vocals were really clean, which is a pretty original combination. In the middle of everything they stopped playing asking for respect for each other. They had a really good vibe although the music is rather aggressive. When they started playing ‘Worker Bees’ you could notice that they were really pumped up and they showed a lot of energy. Also the variation in the setlist was well planned, they had a few pieces with some more relaxed riffs in it to make the crowd relax. And just when you started to think that they turned in some mainstream rockband there were some kickass tunes from D’Sa. The variation between new and old songs was also a strong point. They just played the stronger songs of their oldest album and a lot of the new one.

 

I really enjoyed myself this night and it had been a long time since I’d seen a live-band playing this good and still putting up a very energetic performance.