A Day To Remember pull an ingenious gambit -- luring the hordes with stirring hooks whilst offering brutality enough to satiate mosh beaten circle pits. Moreover, it's a shameless abomination in marketing savvy yielding wildly successful results; undoubtedly floating the Victory accounts well into the black. In a double masterstroke of stylistic pastiche, Underoath's addition to the Australian tour equation has squared ticket sales predictably; the Floridian sextet's artfully dark sophistication an irresistible contrast with ADTR's towering melodicism.

The musical idiom was not expounded upon by The Bride who, unlike their hosts, did not share an iota of the same imagination; scraping the bottom of metalcore's barrel in spectacularly mediocre fashion. The all ages crowd were happily distracted until deadened house lights were punctuated by industrial beats, heralding the return of Underoath like we've never experienced before.

The incendiary open letter of "In Regards To Myself" immediately presented the "new" deal - this was a band with absolutely nothing to prove sans Aaron Gillespie, to a city well familiar with it's previous incarnation; decimating with ease before frantically "Breathing in A New Mentality". The crowd provided immense choral participation during the old favourite "It's Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door", and were reverently fixated during cuts from last year's Disambiguation. Spencer Chamberlain knocked his unencumbered vocal duties out of the park on "Paper Lung", which potentially served as the most crushing moment of the night; shining equally as bright during the once Gillespie-centric "A Boy Brushed Red..." and "Writing On The Walls" before offering assurances of his band's own Australian tour early next year.

This was A Day To Remember's night after all, on their umpteenth (albeit virgin headlining) visit to our shores. Inarguably, they're a more contrived proposition musically, and as such boasted a matching stage set that made Underoath seem comparatively amateurish in the production stakes - confetti cannons, smoke geysers and a hoisted balloon net all exploded at synchronized points teetered the vibe somewhere between awesome and cheese-ball.

The outstanding Jeremy Mckinnon's prowling panache was enough to fill the entire Big Top; the hook line "you know I've got you like a puppet in the palm of my hand..." speaking utter volumes in "I'm Made Of Wax Larry...", as the crowd submitted to his every command. "2nd Sucks" inspired Mortal Kombat-like antics, but was trumped only just by "Mr Highway's Thinking About The End", the "heaviest thing [ADTR's] ever written...". Cuts from "Homesick" and "What Separates..." prevailed, perfectly nailing their tongue-in-cheek brutality with the set closing "Downfall Of Us All" -- Whether you find that betrayal of two genres abominable, corny or well conceived; you or someone like you was probably there at the Big Top, reveling in the guilty pleasure of A Day To Remember.