Live: We Came As Romans – The Key Club Leeds, 4.12.15

This six piece metalcore outfit are well versed in club shows so it’s no surprise how easy they make performing freely look on a stage as small as The Key Club’s. Regenerate is the perfect set opener, being both a fresh lease of life from the new self-titled album and having the combination of their usual clean and unclean vocals and their much welcomed heavy rhythms and a hefty chorus to match. Fade Away draws in the fans who are not yet accustomed to the new album tracks and provides a spotless sing-a-long anthem whereas The World I Used To Know, which feels like a radio ready track made for the masses to sing along, given the certain capacity of this venue, the full potential of this song seems far away.

Tear It Down brings the set back into the heavier side but still holds the poppier edge these tracks from the new album have, a lot like Who Will Pray? which however is distinctively heavier live in comparison to the rather borderline pop album track, shows how they’re still adaptable to their metalcore roots. The band take a brief minute to rest and soon emerge again with the echoey introduction of 12:30 in which vocalist Kyle Pavone shines amongst the eerie instrumentals.

They may be a metalcore band at heart but they offer so much more live, both singers interlacing clean and screaming vocals with the addition of two guitarists they have a much more fuller bodied live outfit. The blaring riffs of Tracing Back Roots opens up the floor into bodies tumbling into each other and the small space everyone has to move. Dave Stephens takes solo for the first part of the song with his aggressive vocals bringing the track to life and Pavone re-enters the stage for a complete contrasting vocal segment to Stephens’ delivery which unites the whole room in the space of a few sentences.

The band have had a handful of headline dates before heading out in support of One Ok Rock and so thanked the fans profusely for showing up to see them play a headline set, the last time they were the city was over a year ago at Leeds Festival and the audience definitely appreciated their return. As they approach the latter end of what has been a short headlining set, Hope is We Came As Romans at their best; deep and relatable lyrics, instrumentals enough to captivate the attention of the most hard to please audiences and this certain audience however small it may be are loving every second.