The Electric Ballroom, Camden – 2 December 2024
It’s a chilly December evening and the queue to get into the electric ballroom in Camden goes down the street and around the corner, but the cheers soon start as Chris Adam the singer of Swedish rock band Smash Into Pieces, and fellow guitarist Benjamin Jennebo, emerge from the doors of the venue to take a walk along the line and serenade the waiting fans.
The first band on tonight‘s bill are Halflives. Before tonight, I hadn’t really heard much more than the latest EP from this Italian three-piece. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were a considerably heavier band than I had previously thought. Young singer Linda Battilani put on a great performance and sporting some rather impressively studded footwear too. One of the high points of their performance was the 2023 single ‘Everybody Knows It’ which is an infectiously catchy little number that is guaranteed to stick in your head after just a couple of listens. A surprise, well at least for me, was a particularly authentic cover of Linkin Park’s recent single ‘The Emptiness Machine’’ which certainly got the crowd excited.
Following on from Halflives were German metalcore outfit, ‘From Fall to Spring’. Fronted by twins Philip and Lukas Wilhelm, Fall To Spring are an impressively tight and energetic band, somewhat reminiscent of a young Linkin Park but with maybe a bit more bounce! The two frontmen are both proficient rappers, singers and screamers.
Their set consisted of tracks, mainly from their latest album, 2023’s ‘Rise’ and they also included a crowd-pleasing Linkin Park cover, ‘In The End’.
Both bands were great to watch and did a good job of getting the crowd ready to welcome Smash Into Pieces onto the stage.
With eight albums under their belt, the Swedish pop-metal four-piece have mastered the art of putting on a good show, tonight’s included a great light show with plenty of lasers – some attached to the drummer Apoc’s fingers. The band kicked straight into their new single, ‘Hurricane’ and the big tunes kept coming, ‘Wake Up’, ‘Glow In The Dark’ and newer track ‘Venom’ keeping the energy high.
Chris Adam is not the kind of singer to leap around a stage, he’s more the ‘pull a pose and focus on the singing’ type of performer whereas his stagemates Benjamin and Emanuel, both on guitar, don’t stop for a second. Emanuel Magnil was only recently made an official member of the Smash Into Pieces band as a live guitarist while also being their tour manager – he has quite the workload!
Long-time lead guitarist, Benjamin Jennebo is a great performer and is constantly prowling around the stage with his Solar guitar, only taking a break when a helpful fan brings him a rum & coke to the front of the stage.
Highlights of the set for me were ‘Heroes Are Calling’ which still retained its almost cinematic feel live, with some massive bass and synths. In fact, the sound for all three bands was spectacular, probably helped by the fact that there were plenty of backing tracks being used throughout all of the performances. I would usually prefer to see performances where all parts are performed live on stage but backing tracks are now an integral part of the live music scene, especially at the poppier end of the spectrum and it certainly sounds great – if missing a little spontaneity.
Linda from Halflives returned to the stage to duet with Chris on ‘Boomerang’ and then the Smash boys took things up a notch with ‘Running Away From Home’, ‘Vanguard’ and ‘Afterglow’ finishing up the evening along with the anthemic ‘Six Feet Under’, their most successful release to date. They played a wide range of tunes from throughout their career, covering nearly all of their best songs and I think it’s safe to say that their fans left the theatre happy.
Follow the bands on their socials at
@Halflives | www.wehavehalflives.com/
@From.Fall.to.Spring | fromfalltospring.de
@/SmashIntoPieces | SmashIntoPieces.com
