words Maitane Hermosa
Manchester, November 9. The Academy is buzzing, packed with leather jackets, black t-shirts, neon pants and animal prints. It’s almost eight, and there’s still plenty of space on the floor, but that won’t last long.
The first band takes the stage with quiet confidence, under dim white lights, entering with attitude and edge, greeting the crowd, throwing compliments like barks into the air. The drums start like an unexpected storm. Then, KT -Kaila Thompson, singer of American band upchuck – super energetic and communicative, comes in ready for a battle, shouting, talking, and dancing convulsively, twisting her body. Guitars and drums at a tempo that reminds me of Linkin Park—somewhere between heavy metal, punk, and hard rock—a furious poetry edging into rap and hip-hop. A powerful sound that sweeps over you with unstoppable energy. KT raises her arms wildly in the air, shaking her head up and down as she screams the start of the second song. In less than a minute, they’ve spat out a banger. Her epileptic mummy movements evoke rebellion, and the crowd stirs, slowly nodding their heads. There’s a huge energy that her body can’t contain, radiating like an aura that infects the audience with a contagious force..
By the second song, feet are lifting off the ground, heads shaking in time. We’re only two songs in, and there are already ovations. Now, singing has turned into a cry for help, and her voice drops low. On stage, the guys wear white t-shirts while she wears black, with military pants, stepping back to let the drummer Chris sing a song in Spanish about wild parties and drunken nights, set to a fast beat, a blend of upbeat almost like cumbia. He wishes someone a happy birthday and finishes the song, shouting: “Viva Mexico!”
KT returns to the stage with overwhelming power, her high, shrill voice contrasting with Chris’s deep tones. I can’t tell which one of them smells more like aggression, but we’re fiercely demanding rebellion in a trembling infinity. The audience has calmed down gradually, slipping into a trance sustained by an aggressive drumbeat. God bless rock and roll. KT’s body writhes and twists like a horizontal screw, spitting out honest, merciless lines, railing against that unfair president who doesn’t keep his promises. The room fills up steadily, and the weight of their songs seems to have drained the crowd’s jumping energy. Angry guitars keep going, and she continues to deliver furious lines of condemnation, waving her arms violently above her head, twisting her body into the most impossible angles so fast that if you blink, you’ll miss it. She raises her fists to the sky, her body folding over. Little by little, the audience has crowded in front of the sound booth. The room wraps around and reverberates with the music impeccably. Small interludes and bridges where they look at each other to reach each song’s climax.
Suddenly, the crowd forms a circle in the middle of the front area where she jumps off the stage to feel the crowd’s love and energy, stirring up rage and discomfort, triggering the first mosh pit of the night and closing their performance with a startling, well-executed message. They’ve surely swept away every trace of innocence from our conscious minds. They’ve moved through our souls, setting a fire in the arid landscape, searching for a spring of virtue. Forty minutes have barely felt like a breath. They’ve appeared like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, taking pity on our sinful souls, driving away our fears while we wait for the next band.
A smooth bachata plays as we wait for the band change. It’s 9 PM, and people keep entering the venue. The room changes magically. The white sheet covering the back wall lights up, turning into a screen that projects the band’s movements. Amplified, aggressive music blares from the speakers. The room goes dark, and the floor monitors behind the stage glow with yellowish-orange, wrapping the venue in an old-time aura, like candle flames.
The band steps on the stage. Amy strides out, looking cute with her bleached hair and a blow-dry against a fan that will serve her well throughout the performance. She looks tiny, but her energy is enormous. She never stops jumping and bouncing from one side of the stage to the other as if an earthquake were pushing her body upwards. From the first moment, everybody is going mad. The tightly packed bodies are like ants, following this tremor of the earth, and the whole room dances, jumps, and nods along. She’s so hermetically sexy, dressed in tight jeans with two holes showing her glutes, gripping the microphone firmly while the giant fan in the centre of the stage blows her hair around.
Between songs, she talks to her frenzied audience. She wants to talk politics, voicing a generation witnessing wars unfolding, and shouts for Palestine. In a hypnotic dance, she fights with her body, throwing punches to the sky and tossing her blonde hair in all directions. No one said it, but her rhythm reminds me of the American band The Donnas, or even the now-gone punk Spanish band “Las Perras del Infierno.”
The guys in the band frame her, creating a dance floor that lets Amy be the dancer and star of the performance. Fans melt. Hands fly, and no one in the room stands still. The mosh pits have been nonstop since the first song, guitar solos and silent body converstions with the audience. The stage turns blood-red, and a spotlight follows her back and forth. She crouches down, and everyone wants to touch her, wants her energy.
At one point, the screen goes black, the stage goes dark with a spotlight falling on her. The guitars play the slowest song of the night, which in 30 seconds snaps back to the original rage and energy.
We’re halfway through the journey, and side lights transform the stage into a sanctuary of complain. Their sound is thick and round, her voice deep, her words sharp. “Stop fucking with me now” — almost spoken like poetry, showing her body in athletic forms as if she had muscles to kill. The crowd claps. It feels like a ballad disguised as a storm.
“We are all pigs after all,” she declares, that we need to have the audacity to do what we want before we’re dead. The flickering projections shift from hectic, full-movement images to red soaked scenes, like a battlefield drenched in blood. Like a battlefield drenched in powerful choruses. The guys never interact with each other like their energy is focused on hitting each note. The half of the crowd has become a stirred-up sea. The mosh pit grows larger as the concert progresses. Plastic cups fly through the air. “Like a chewing gum” and several bodies surf over heads, girls on shoulders imitating Amy’s adrenaline-fueled dance, each line delivered with clarity and strength. During the bridges, she does sexy dances that agitates the crowd, who shout louder and louder, everyone is wanting more, and the mosh pit shapes half the rink. The bassist says “Thank you very much,” illuminated by a spotlight. “Give some sugar, I am your neighbour.” The softest guitar of the entire concert plays, no drums, and everyone sings with Amy. The background turns turquoise blue, and for the first time, the crowd is submerged in the sea. The drums start softly with cymbals and bass drum, a bubble that feels like an ocean in the middle of an intense, fiery performance, exploding in another apocalyptic frenzy of red and white lights. Her poetry returns, spat and shouted with rage and stoicism. Projections, screams, and rap come back, fans’ feet in the air, and bodies surfing overhead. “I got you,” and she looks like a weird priestess, jumping on every reply of her followers.
They try to interact with the crowd, asking people to raise their hands for their favourite Manchester football team, but it seems like the crowd isn’t into it after asking several times. We crave music, punk and rock in the form of riot. Please keep lighting up my world with purple lights. At this point, it’s hard to breathe, with only two songs left. And honestly, despite the energy poured out by the singer and her animated movements, it’s started to feel very monotonous. A few songs stand out, with guitar parts that seem to follow the same melodic pattern, minimal solos and the highs come from her interaction with the crowd and the projection changes. Perfect for fans craving the singer’s attention. She crouches down, pointing indiscriminately at the crowd, stretching her legs in the air with energetic kicks. The backing vocals make each song shine in a slightly different way, like waves rolling onto the shore—all alike, yet unique. Shirts and bottles fly. She keeps shaking her head, bouncing like a kangaroo. It’s incredible to think she’s not getting the workout of her life. Heads are lit again by golden lights from the monitors, and magically, we’re back at the beginning as if in a circle of time.
The last song is announced, and the atmosphere goes wild. The entire floor moves, swept up in excitement, dancing and swaying to celebrate the final song. We are like clay mixed in torrential water. The frantic fans’ limbs multiply in the air as the band says goodbye. The yellowish lights stay on, and a sound technician steps out to tune the bass.
Smoke billows from the stage, and the band takes their positions, met by the fever of a crowd that waits for Amy to regain her strength backstage, then rejoins with her outrageous dance, jumping and stomping the ground with one leg.
No head is unruffled at this point, no soul goes untouched by her wild movements. Stillness is forbidden. They say their goodbyes, Amy calling out a big singing “cheeeeers” as she steps back with the band, taking a moment to the mic to say the last thanks.
The crowd spills into the cold night, heads sweaty, as Baccara’s ”Yes Sir, I can Boogie” plays on the speakers and people sing the chorus together. A room packed with 950 souls that lived and loved the energy of these two bands geographically so distant from each other and from us, but unified in purpose and rage.
