Dead! live at The Roundhouse - Review
“We are a band called Dead! you probably never heard of us but we like to make the acquaintance and hope to make the acquaintance again."
It’s not easy to open for a band like Blondie, it’s not easy to grace the stage knowing that in under an hour Debbie Harry herself would be in the place you were standing. But Dead! seemed to manage it, with ease. Dead! were not intimidated trying to impress fans of Blondie, instead they were absolutely loving it.
The five piece came on stage in a burst of energetic wonder and within an instant The Roundhouse began to shake. Many the crowd were perhaps much older than a regular Dead! gig but looking around, every one of them were bobbing their heads in approval. The room was almost fully filled with people already. People clapping, whistling and cheering and by the second song the head bops had turned into few people dancing/ lightly jumping and an awful lot of head banging.
Singer Alex’s distinctive dancing and gives credence to the immense stage presence he commands on stage whilst guitarists Sam Matlock’s super charged antics and abseiling stage equipment went down a treat with the crowd. By the third song of the set, they won other the entirety of The Roundhouse, and you could tell they knew it, by the smiles on their faces.
The stand out moments of the set were the band playing "Jessica". There’s something about this song that resonated with everyone in the building, an air of pleasant melancholy perhaps. This was the moment, if you were to pinpoint it, that Dead! won the Roundhouse. They later go into their own, special rendition of “My Generation” with Alex squatting down by the audience before leaving the stage for the band to exhaust the seemingly endless energy they have. Dead! do not have to hope to make the acquaintance of the Roundhouse again, they’re on course to headline it. See for yourself, go see Dead! Live.