Venue : 2 Pigs Cheltenham
Date : Feb 2005
Bands : Fastlane, The Forgiving, A Burning Ruin
Fastlane - a band that have supported the likes of Avenged Sevenfold and shared the main stage of last year's Give It A Name festival with Rise Against and Story of the Year have started their first headlining UK tour.
With dates at places such as the Barfly clubs and Carling Academies it was surprising to see that their fifth gig on the tour was to be held in a bedraggled pub in the backstreets of a small, lifeless town - Cheltenham.
However, nigh to when the doors where set to open, a gargantuan stream of floppy-haired, genital-clenching trouser wearing teens had formed outside. This shows the enormity of the band's fan base for a small town to bring out all of its metal-lovers in such numbers.
The first of the two local support bands to the night's proceedings were the vastly ambitious and hugely fantastic A Burning Ruin. Their fast-paced and Bullet For My Valentine-style guitar playing got the moshing of a great start and from the onset anyone could see that nothing from this band was going to give anything less than 100% auditory satisfaction. The Forgiving, the second support tried their hardest to outshine their local counterparts and although being very good and pounding out some professional sounding numbers could not do so on the night.
A good quarter of an hour later the beaming Fastlane entered onto the diminutive stage and the 200 odd strong crowd burst into deafening screams. They burst straight into one of their riotous punk/metal songs which got the whole room moving in an instant. As the set progressed they continued to thrash out quality metal from their new album "New Start" to the unwavering fans. The stage presence which the whole band possessed was far beyond their years and their sound very deserving of going out to a wider audience than that of a pub's capacity. Yet, playing such an intimate gig was extremely endearing to the fans and picked up a few extra ones such as myself.
A Burning Ruin - www.myspace.com/aburningruin
The Forgiving - www.myspace.com/theforgiving
Fastlane - www.myspace.com/fastlane
