The Verse’s Maisie Kazen reviews Eastbourne bred pop-punk band ROAM’s gig at Brighton’s Patterns on the 25th November.
It is a chilly evening in Brighton where ROAM are playing their first headline show in over 2 years at local venue Patterns. Like Pacific have come all the way over from Toronto to support them, having met at Warped Tour over summer. Lead singer, Jordan Black announces that he lost his job just before coming over for the tour and its experiences such as this and the loss of his closest relative that sets the bands passionate lyrics apart from other pop punk bands in the genre. The band do all they can to get the crowd as excited as they are and there’s definitely a few people singing along.
When headliners ROAM come onstage it is immediately clear that despite still being a relatively small band, they have a keen following. Hailing locally from Eastbourne, ROAM visit Patterns as somewhat a hometown show, noting people they knew from school in the crowd. The 5 piece open with ‘cabin fever’ from their 2016 debut album ‘Backbone’ and its sing-alongs all round. Despite playing a lot from the new album, a good few older songs are delivered with plenty of excitement and even more confidence. ‘Over Your Head’, a personal highlight from the set, and ‘Foresight’ receive huge reactions from the crowd. Things slow down a bit as the band ask the audience to get out their phones and lighters for ‘Tracks’, a song originally written acoustically and re-written for the full band (to stop it sounding like something performed at the pub on ‘jam night’ apparently).
A cover of Green Days ‘Basket Case’ is a fun part of the set, as the band visit some of pop-punks deepest roots, announcing that a recorded version will be released with Kerrang shortly. ROAM do their best to give an energetic and exciting performance and despite looking a little worn out towards the middle, they bring it back for a passionate end to the set which saw the crowd hit its peak as teenagers went flying over the barrier. Guest vocalists make the last couple of songs a great shared experience and the band finish with big hit ‘Deadweight’.
For their first headline UK tour in a while ROAM put on a great show, there’s some real excitement for these guys’ future!
