Review – FEVER 333

Date : Wednesday 6th November 2019

Venue: Stylus, Leeds

Supports: N/A

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The best thing about autumn is the pure amount of gigs and tours that pass through the UK. And not to do things by half, what better way to start off the month than four gigs in four days! Starting off things were arguably one of the most explosive and intense live artists in FEVER 333. Challenging conventions across the music industry by performing their ‘demonstrations’ with no support act was an interesting choice and a smaller band may have struggled to pull it off but FEVER definitely rose to the occasion for their first UK headline shows. From the outset with the white curtain dropping  and launching straight into Made in America gave an idea of how the rest of the night was going to pan out and with the sold out crowd filling Stylus it was clear that this was going to be Fever at their rawest and most intense.  Using that energy to full potential with chants of “333” and the usual “Yorkshire” chants then band kept the intensity at full continuing with ‘One of Us’ which saw a great response from the crowd with bodies flying across the barrier into the waiting arms of the security who did a fantastic job of making sure everyone was safe. After the chaos things slowed down slightly as the band played ‘Inglewood’ which took a slight diversion as for the first of a few times Jason left the stage to take up the mic duties from the Sound desk at the back of the room, as the final chorus crashed in filled with emotion Jason jumped into the crowd and surfed his way back to the front.

With the crowd having the chance to catch their breath, the band wasted no time in picking things back up and the combination of ‘Animal’ straight into ‘Trigger’ created what I can only describe as a maelstrom in the floor areas. During these tracks Jason mentioned how as a generation safe spaces are needed to have the difficult conversations that people are avoiding and then we as a group are strong. Following the motivational chats at refused last week, it continued the theme nicely and showed that change is possible as long as we give it the chance. ‘Am I Here?’ saw a piano taken to the sound desk at the back of venue and Jason give am acoustic performance joined by the crowd to build on the emotional aspect of all their tracks. Taking back to the stage he mentioned that the decision to not take a band out as a support was to gauge the amount of fans that were willing to see them without disadvantaging any possible supports. Mentioning that it wasn’t a given that tonight would sell out was a thought on the band and that when they do come back with a support they want to be able to pay then well rather than have them suffer as it isn’t a cheap thing to do.

‘Burn It’ made sure energy that the energy was turned back up to 11 and and this was continued to be matched by the band on stage. It really is s skill to play the perfect tracks while throwing yourself across the stage (and yes that did include drummer Aric). Ending in style with ‘Hunting Season’ finished things off nicely with one last cathartic release. Each member put in a huge performance tonight as always and that’s definitely one of the reasons why they draw such a huge crowd. As they lft the stage it was obvious that tonight has been a more well rounded experience compared to the very explosive short performances at download. Given that longer run time they could really explore their growing back catalogue and show off a little bit of everything. Mixing two completely different genres like RnB and Hardcore takes a lot of skill and even more so to pull it off as well as FEVER 333 do. Definitely one of the most intense and skilled bands that are rising through the scene at the moment and I can’t wait for them to be back taking on even bigger venues.