Billy Talent @ Camden Barfly
Secret matinee show

For most Billy Talent shows if you arrive half an hour before doors open you would see a queue running past into the horizon but not today.  A secret show not even announced until tickets were sold out it is for the biggest of big fans.  Only 300 can fit into the small room and it is truly the best atmosphere to see Billy Talent in.  The fans wait impatiently for 2:15 when the show will begin.  No support act for the show, just the band everyone came to see, so all can be heard is the excited voices and the sound of the newest Alexisonfire album, Crisis, being played in the background.

The lights dim and the Canadian quartet stroll onto the tiny stage.  A ravaging guitar riff and the band launch into their single Devil In A Midnight Mass.  The crowd surges together forwards, trying to close the impossible gap between them and the stage.  Chanting echoes through the crowd as the set progresses.  The set played is truly a crowd pleaser, a mix of singles, album tracks and the rarely played.

The room fills with stifling heat as the temperature from one of the few hot days this year seeps into the venue.  Singer, Ben Kowalewicz, strips off his t-shirt and his tattoo emblazoned across his chest reading “never give up” is clearly readable for all those in the crowd as he launches into them throughout the set.  Each song is powerful, unadulterated and raw.  Something clearly mirrored in their crowd as they ask for suggestions for a song.
With 2 songs clearly favourites to be sung they ask the crowd to choose.  Still no push between them so they throw out another idea to be sung and a unanimous scream of agreement pulses out onto the stage.  And so, single, River Below is sung. 

However, as only a matinee show the set is no longer than an hour long and they choose what is quite possibly their best song to finish this show in the middle of the day with.  Red Flag is a song which every person in the crowd knows the lyrics to.  A song with political undertones, which could have easily been written by a band such as Anti Flag, but it seems as though Billy Talent got there first.  There isn’t a dry back in the venue by the time this song as finished.  Sweat is dripping everywhere and there isn’t a person who cares.  This is a show for the fans that have been there for the band for a long time, and it was a show which truly delivered.