SOS Festival XI 2018 Manchester – Day 1 (Friday 13th July)

19th July 2018 0 By Aaron Emerson

Nothing can get you together like a festival; full of your own peers, festivals are a gathering of like-minded individuals from across all corners of life with one goal – damned good music. SOS however holds a special place in the festival world; this is no ordinary indoor festival, not only is it family run but their extended family is the punters themselves. Never will you see such devotion to their customers and such friendly “hello’s” and huge hugs from the organisers to the regulars of SOS. Taking a good glance at the gathering crowd ready to enter the venue, you can see the regular faces find each other with smiles and regalement’s and long overdue gossips. Enter stage front, the fans pour into the generous floor space in front of the main stage, which dominates the venue. Searching the gleaming faces of long-lost friendships from the previous year, you see many mini moshers running around the foyer and stage area. Ever the family friendly event,SOS fest has it all, even for the ickle ones with its children’s corner set up to keep them busy.

Opening up the evening, Stormrider (7) gives us a taste of things to come; their 80’s British Metal heavily influenced sound heats up the crowd. That family vibe springs up in the most peculiar places as interview/reviewer come singer of Stormrider, Mike Coyle struts the stage. Well this time he will be critiqued rather than doing the critiquing; the style and sound is solid with a generic overlay that compliments the more nuanced chords and lines. This was a good start to the evening festivities. Up next came the enigmatic Doomsday Outlaw(8); vocalist, Phil, showed his joy and pleasure of being on stage with his eccentric movements, dance and cheeky pelvic thrusts; he was certainly a colourful character to behold, much like his counterparts. The incredible bass and thumping riffs drags influences from the 70’s rock legends like Led Zeppelin, twisting them with noughties modern rock anthemic vibes and a sprinkling of their own flavour of energy and tempo.

The Black Sabbath influences of King Witch(6) came through in the dark undertones of their Stoner meets Hard Rock style. They had some interesting aspects that kept the crowd entertained but the same tones of the majority of the tracks let them down somewhat. The interesting aspect of course was the Pat Benetar aspects combined with the low tones of the stoner style metal that sets them apart; they are certainly one to consider another showing. Void(6) lit up the Wizz stage with their country-style double acoustic set; the duet gave the crowd some respite from the main stages’ heavy tones. Between the sets, we got to see the down tempo Gorilla Riot(7) grace us with their Southern Rock influences. The taste of Black Stone Cherry melded with country blues comes through giving us a taste of Tennessee (made in Manchester).

Headlining the night was the incredible Bigfoot(8), boasting seven guest vocalists due to the departure of their own, made this a night to remember for both band and audience. From the opening of ‘Eat Your Words’ sung by Craig Wells (Atlas UK) to the final of ‘Uninvited’ sung by Barry Mills (Massive Wagons), Bigfoot struck a delectable chord with the audience. There were highlights such as Phil Poole (Doomsday Outlaw) hitting the tracks pitch perfect and strutting his stuff on stage as well as the enigmatic powerhouse vocals of Cass King (Tomorrow is Lost) that brought the house down with her female rendition of ‘Run’ and ‘I Dare you’. But there were low points too, the chagrin performance of Matt Jones singing ‘Come Down My Way’ and ‘Freak Show’ was lacking the quality of the rest of the guests, marking his vocals out like Johnny Vegas strangling a cat. That said, Bigfoot gave us a very entertaining and unique show that will never likely to happen again with these incredible guests. A show to remember for all Bigfoot fans that came down and showed their support.