The Sugarmill was the first night of their UK tour, so this on its own represented that ZEBRAHEAD were going to be on a mission tonight: they couldn’t let their first date flop. In the end it almost felt like they were trying a little bit too hard, the tracks were good bringing another dimension to the new album and old tracks were brought up to date forcing you to kick yourself for forgetting them in the first place. But between each song the band-crowd banter seemed to carry on for a little bit too long despite how funny the guys are.

The old songs went down a treat: the early placement of 'Postcards From Hell' was bone-shaking, the punk elements of the band shone through and anyone thinking they were going to have a quiet night quickly corrected themselves. They were pulling out all the stops, lead singer Ali even performed something I have actually never seen before in my life of going to gigs. He jumped into the crowd before a song and got everyone in the room to sit down on the floor and on his count they all had to bounce up and start jumping which happened to look quite spectacular, but he knew it would anyway.

However, the new songs almost got an even better reaction, the new album has been out since August 25th so those who bought it then will have had plenty of time to learn all the words to its numerous good tracks – songs which appeared in abundance during the set, such as 'Mental Health', 'Hell Yeah!' and first song of the encore 'Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right'. The most impressionable new song they played, in my opinion, was the album’s opening track 'HMP' with raging guitar riffs and the memorable lyrics "I aint no Steve McQueen, I’m like a dead pop star in a magazine".

The mixture of Ali’s rap-like vocals and Matty’s voice provided a good front for the band while Matty and Greg’s onslaught on the guitar front was exceptional. Ben’s antics and bass playing was top notch and Ed’s drumming was excellent. Who would have known that this was the bands first night of touring the UK, you’d expect a show like this a few more dates down the line when the band had fully warmed up to the chaos that is touring.

In conclusion, buy the new album, simple as that. It’s great, you’ll be listening to it for a long, long time. Oh and a second point, go and see them live, ZEBRAHEAD will try their hardest to give you the night of your life – you’ll understand me when they annihilate 'The Anthem' and 'The Step-up', the last two songs of the encore.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Review by Alex Duncalf

Photography by Alexander Shaw