“We are Those Damn Crows,” says Shane Greenhall. You know the drill by now. They open with “Who Did It”, and my goodness, they’re going to make use of every minute they’ve got. Mind you, when Greenhall tells us it’s bass player Lloyd Wood’s birthday, he cuts off any prospect of a singalong with “We ain’t got time.” Fair enough. They’ve got six songs to play.
“Man on Fire” is the sound of a damn good rock ’n’ roll band. “No Surrender”, from their No. 1 album “God Shaped Hole”, is heavier and darker, while “Find a Way” always sounded like it was made for places like this. Go all the way back to the first album for “Blink of an Eye” and there’s Greenhall at the piano. “Give it everything you got,” he says before “Go Get It”. The chorus is pretty much the band’s mission statement. I first saw them a decade ago. I said it when they played with ZZ Top at Wembley and I’ll say it again. Those Damn Crows were born for arenas. I doubt we’ll see them this low on the bill for much longer.
Coheed and Cambria are a favourite of mine, and even I’ll admit they stick out a bit on this bill. “A Favor House Atlantic” and “Searching for Tomorrow” are ample proof that nobody else sounds like them. What on earth do you make of “Ten Speed (Of God’s Blood & Burial)” if this is your first encounter? A fair bit of the crowd looks bewildered, which Claudio Sanchez more or less acknowledges when he reckons most of them may never have heard the band before.
The groove on “Shoulders” is tremendous. Then Sanchez warns that things are about to get weird, and here comes “Key Entity Extraction II: Holly Wood the Cracked”. They play “Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry the Defiant” too. They live in their own world, these boys, and the sheer force of “Here We Are Juggernaut” is enough to make you want to move in. Bassist Zach Cooper dedicates the rather more tender “Here to Mars” to his friend Zach Myers. Sanchez asks who’s ever told a lie before “The Liars Club”, and when half the room declines to own up, he tells them they’re “clearly full of shit”. Then he’s off down the ego ramp for an enormous “Welcome Home”. Any chance you get to see Coheed and Cambria, take it. Hopefully a few more people in Birmingham will do just that the next time they come round.
A man with a television on his head miming to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” isn’t how I’d have imagined Shinedown opening their UK tour. The bangs and pyro that greet “Safe and Sound” are more like it. Brent Smith points out they’ve been at this for 25 years. It’s 14 since I saw them headline the Institute in the centre of Birmingham. They had the ambition and the sound even then. Now they’ve got the budget to match. “We’re Shinedown, and we’d like to welcome you to the show,” says Smith. “Asking for It” is absolutely huge.
The songs from “The Sound of Madness” are still the heart of the set. “Diamond Eyes (Boom-Lay Boom-Lay Boom)” makes a hell of a racket, and “The Crow & the Butterfly” soars. Before “If You Only Knew”, Smith has everyone shaking hands with the person next to them. Lovely, I dare say, if you like that sort of thing. Between that and the spiritual reflection of “Three Six Five”, I’m ready for the bass on “Devil” to shake the building. It does, and that’s before the flames come up.
“Searchlight” gets the phone lights out and works well stripped back. By “Enemies”, there’s an awful lot of faffing for my money, although I’m clearly in the minority. Smith commands an arena full of people like he’s out for a stroll. “Call Me” takes me back, and “Dance, Kid, Dance” reminds me how good this band are when they just get on with playing. “Bully” is about as angry as they get, and then the support bands are back on stage. Claudio Sanchez, Travis Stever and Lloyd Wood join in on The Outfield’s “Your Love”, which veers into Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way”. The chorus on new song “Young Again” sticks on first hearing. Playing a new song here is brave too.
“A Symptom of Being Human” lights the room up again. “Cut the Cord” turns into a mass singalong, and on “Monsters” you get the feeling they’ve had to dig deep for those words. Zach Myers plays “Kryptonite” on his own, and the band make a centrepiece of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man”, dedicating it to Brad Arnold, the 3 Doors Down singer who died in February. It’s a brilliant song, beautifully done. “Sound of Madness” puts fists in the air, and “Second Chance” is as good as Shinedown get.
I’ve always thought Shinedown were the epitome of modern American corporate rock. They’re very, very good at it, and in Birmingham you could hear exactly how much those songs meant to people, but they are still a bit too earnest for my tastes.
