Off the back of their album ‘Here in your eyes’ and their support tour with Good Charlotte, the boys had a sell-out show at The Metro’s Lair venue. But how was it for the punters? Dave Roberts investigates.

OK, OK, so I’ve been sent to a soft rock gig. Usually nothing makes my blood boil more than thousands of pre-18 girls screaming their lungs out for any given member of a band because they ‘look so cool!’ or ‘Their songs just, like, touch me? Like they wrote them for me!’ That being said, this gig was no different, with the afore mentioned girls limited to the room capacity, with their respective boyfriends there for the ride.

However, New Empire are one soft-pop-rock band that I actually enjoy. It’s quite different to the normal things I listen to, and it was refreshing to see people playing things that didn’t involve odd timings and drop-tuned guitars. So, I headed out on another blisteringly cold winter’s night and rocked up at the Lair just in time to catch the first support band.

In fact, I’m not going to spend too much time on the support acts, because they did their job. They were good at keeping the stage warm for the boys before they took to the stage, and even in an overly boomy room managed to pull it together for the crowd that had gathered for them.

However, what or rather who we were all there for was New Empire. And, when they took to the stage the crowd erupted in cheering and screaming at only that exact frequency that the afore mentioned girls could make, and managed to slightly drown out the band. Even so, the acoustics were much better for the boys than their supports, with everything being clear enough to hear, although the singer did get a little drowned out at times, which I suggest is probably a bi-product of playing in a giant concrete bunker.

The boys moves and performed amicably, and even introduced their new… err ex guitar-tech turned bass player member to the crowd, which is always a good thing to do in that light. And speaking of, the light show was incredibly precise for a gig of this size, and the backdrop looked like a lot of work to sew. However dear readers, there is always a however.

Either which way you look at it though, the set wasn’t long enough. With the songs totalling just over 50 minutes, even if it was 50 minutes of awesome, it just didn’t feel like a huge epic gig as what it could have. I mean yes, the boys probably played a lot of their catalogue of songs, and yes, I thoroughly enjoyed them, but I suppose 50 minutes is just a little short of an hour, which is a decent length for a pop-rock band. Besides that however, and a slightly out of tune telecaster that actually started to grate, I couldn’t fault them.

This was the first time that I’d seen the New Empire guys in full flight, and after hearing their album I was expecting nothing less than a good show. And a good show it was – even running into a few notables tells me these guys are going to be the next big thing in Australian music.

In fact, didn’t Powderfinger leave an opening for a Soft-pop-rock band in the market? Because it wouldn’t surprise me if they filled it.