Due to weird trams that somehow did not want to run at their peak speed, I missed about three quarters of Zeal’s set. From what I did see though, it was an appealing set of tunes generated by a Mac and a set of whispy vocal chords from one guy, Robert Jarvis, who was definitely enjoying himself. The three songs that I witnessed were accompanied with a pretty spectacular visual backdrop behind him. The impressive visuals would go on throughout the night.

Despite those visuals, the night then went into a bit of a musical plateau. Empire played a set of soft-ish rock that would not be out of place on a digital radio station playing Classic Rock non-stop. The five piece plundered through songs that to me sounded a little too much like each other. There were poses aplenty as well, which I could only cringe at for some inexplicable reason. The audience seemed to enjoy themselves, so it could have been a case of me being just simply the minority. A couple of covers were incorporated into the set as well. A version of The Who’s ‘My Generation’ was a standout that probably delivered the most musical fervor during the 45 minutes.

The night finished off with some nice whirly pop from Blackchords, a four piece who I had heard were doing some really wonderful things overseas. Their songs were polished and really ready for a larger stage than the one that they were performing on. We heard songs that plunered along, despite the conotations in their titles to be more invigorated (like ‘Dance, Dance, Dance’) and other songs like ‘At Worlds End’ just seemed to be four guys looking at the floor. The only huge highlight I found was with some pretty impressive guitar soloing and keyboard noodling. It seemed the band were just going through the motions though tonight and in all honesty, nothing too invigorating happened at this gig. Like I mentioned, the visuals on the backdrop behind Blackchords, but this is a gig review mainly about music. Maybe I just came on an off night.