Monday 02/05/05 Give It A Name Festival @ Alexandra Palace, London

When it comes to festivals, Gigwise always finds it’s the journey there that sets you up for the rest of the festival. With Glastonbury you have the acres of farmland, quaint villages and Stonehenge creating a cosmic atmosphere. The Reading Festival has the sun drenched town centre and people camping out in other people’s gardens, trying to sell you something you don’t need. With the Give It A Name Festival you have the gorgeous surroundings of Alexandra Palace, the regal feeling of history bursting through the meadows… But most of all you have the huge queue, but hey who cares as everyone is here to see the cream of the emo/metal/hard/post-hard/pop core crop, and even the ridiculous queuing wont get us down.

Me Without You are playing when we finally get inside the Palace. Their Frantic take on spazzed-out hardcore energizes the crowd as they pour in from each corner. The guitar lines buzz into one another merging menacingly into a distorted lysergic nightmare, whilst the frontman mumbles to himself incoherently like a drunk tramp who’s lost his pet bee’s. Suddenly all the boys who think they’re more hardcore than anyone else push out their chest in some sort of ape-like idiotic macho display, their mouths open simultaneously and the filth that explodes from their lips is enough to make us blush just because Fightstar are on. Obviously that’s the perfect excuse for people to act like absolute ass holes… Charlie was in Busted? So ****ing what! We all have embarrassing pasts, and at least he’s finally doing what he really wants to do… As for the set, although their sound is slightly generic (that hasn’t harmed Funeral For A Friend has it?) and Charlie’s voice doesn’t hold together well live, the energy and crunchiness of the bands sound does well to keep the event’s momentum high.

Mae may not get pelted with bottles, or have to endure a fury of swear words, but their music’s lack of backbone creates an insipid mess one can only describe as bed wetting music… Avoid! The Lucky Nine burst on stage with a swagger that’s bursting with confidence. There's no way they're going to let the audience ignore them, but unfortunately while the erstwhile side-project of “A” and 100 Reasons may have all the conviction in the world, they don’t really have the ability to back it up. The riffs are forgettable, the vocals don’t stand out from the melee, and the songs borrow heavily from other bands. Sure they may sound different to their day jobs, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Alexisonfire receive the biggest response so far, like a homecoming gig (except for the fact that they’re from Canada) and minutes into their first song it’s not difficult to see why. Dealing in something more passionate than what’s gone before them, they tease everyone from the wings of the venue into the middle, and when they’re trapped, pulverize them with their highly charged emotive detonations and crunching rhythms. We haven’t seen a band with so much infectious energy since The Movie Life were still going. Rise Against have been on the edges of the hardcore scene for so long now, and finally having signed a major label contract to release the album of their careers, it seems like it’s their time. Their set is packed with huge shout along chorus’s, politically charged messages and a sound that takes the fury of Rancid to the next logical level, which is definitely a good thing!

Maybe we've been missing out on something, but we're really surprised at Coheed and Cambria’s high billing. Not because they don’t deserve it, because they really do, but because we thought everyone hated them? The whole Punk vs. Prog argument maybe old, but some people cling onto it for dear life. But thank you to those in charge for such inspired foresight as their gloriously epic sound perfectly compliments our battered and bruised souls, letting our minds expand through the tangled and twisted lines, then it comes crashing down with some of the most jagged and powerful riffs known to mankind… Sure they may rock like Rush, and have haircuts even the Mars Volta would be embarrassed of, but thank **** they rock!

Mc Lars has been staying on the side of the stage for the whole event, introducing bands, but when he comes on to rap before Finch hit the stage, it’s the perfect antidote to the building tension surrounding the next two bands and whether they can cut it still after being out of the lime light for some time. His infectious cut-n-splice hip-hop technique perfectly fits with the songs he chooses to sample and a mass epidemic of white boys trying to do bad break dancing ensues around the venue. It’s been quite some time since Finch last played England. They’ve recorded an album, lost a drummer and seemingly vanished from the consciousness of their fans. When they hit the stage though, the sense of excitement is palpable. But something isn’t quite right. The sound is awful (Randy’s guitar suffering the most throughout the set) the band seem very nervous throughout, their singer hardly addressing the audience and Randy seeming to have some sort of nervous breakdown whenever in front of the mic. The band never quite gel throughout the set, the new numbers don’t seem radically different and on first listen do impress, but the explosive energy they once possessed seems to have vanished and the lack of 'Letters To You' from their set seems quite ill judged. Not quite the storming return we were hoping for!

Well, if 3 years ago you were to tell us that Funeral For A Friend would be where they are now we would’ve laughed our arses off and called you a crazy mofo. It all boils down to this, Funeral For A Friend are a competent band, they understand their audience, and by in large they have belief in what they’re doing. It's just that what they’re doing is rather dull. After the millionth faux-thrash Iron Maiden riff and out of tune pleadings of their singer it becomes so predictable it hurts. Where are the heart-wrenching melodies? The energised breakdowns? The sombre epics? The new material does seem to shine brighter than their previous musings, but it's hard to pin point what it is exactly that people find so irresistible about this band? Maybe time will change, and for every teeny bop kid who gets into (fill in space)-core music through bands like Funeral For A Friend, Lost Prophets, and Fightstar there will be a good few who decide to check out the bands that were inspiration to their favourites and discover music with so much more soul and passion. Emo maybe a dirty word, but don’t write it off yet!