There are times when you leave a concert thinking; “That was amazing.” But there’s the odd time that you leave speechless. When All Time Low played at Sheffield’s O2 Academy on Monday, January 23th, it was the latter most people left doing.
New York pop punkers We Are The In Crowd opened up the evenings show and gave an energetic performance whilst singing songs that a surprising amount of the audience knew. They got the crowd warmed up and The Maine shortly followed with two members in skeleton outfits. More people started singing along and the energy was building even more.
Later than planned, All Time Low took to the stage and from the opening bars of their latest single “Time Bomb”, to the closing bars of their famous hit “Dear Maria, Count Me In”, the crowd never stopped jumping about.
The band showed exactly why they belonged on stage when they lead singer Alex Gaskarth brought out his acoustic guitar to play “Remembering Sunday”. During Juliet Simms part, Gaskarth stopped playing and all that could be heard was the crowd singing her lyrics to him.
Guitarist Jack Barakat told The Linc before the show: “Alex is our main lyricist and when he writes lyrics they’re straight from the heart. A lot of them are stories that we’ve all experienced.”
“In the beginning we didn’t think about the reaction the songs would have because we didn’t really have that many fans but now we know that we have these great shows so we need to write kind of for those shows.” All the songs they played got a great reaction from the crowd despite the set being cut short.
Barakat also admitted that the band feels pressured to be as good as their last record. “Considering all our records are pretty successful, I think there’s a lot of pressure. We don’t get the pressure from the fans but it’s a pressure of not wanting to disappoint them.”
The energy the crowd gave off helped an ill Gaskarth get through the show. At one point he told the crowd that he didn’t want any applause after the next song and just a thumbs up from everyone. A few people ignored him and cheered anyway, getting jeered by the singer for doing so.
As always, there was banter on stage and to certain members of the audience – including a girl wearing flashing bunny ears – and the occasional rude joke. One of the main parts of their set was a set of three lighting panels behind them that started off showing the letters ATL but bringing up as many rude three-letter words as they could think of.
The sell-out crowd certainly enjoyed themselves and gave it their all, leaving a memorable night not just for themselves, but also the band.