“Having seen ETID before in Manchester, I wasn’t expecting them to be up to all that much in Liverpool, but I’m glad I got the chance to see them again. This time they were a fuck of alot louder, the vocals were alot clearer, and the whole band just seemed to play a generally tighter set. And they played that song that goes “I have a very expensive pen”, so I was happy =D It was Stampin’ Ground’s last date with Chimaira, and everyone just seemed to be really hyped for them. I wasn’t too impressed when they starting hating on emo, haha (although everyone else loved it!), but I suppose it was in the Anti-Valentines spirit, so I could put up with it! The pits though were just stupidly crazy…its true what they say – you’ve never seen a real fight until you’ve seen one in Liverpool, but it was more like half a dozen at any given time! At this point I was thinking they were fuckin’ quality, and Chimaira were gonna be upstaged… It was probably a close run thing, but by the end, I enjoyed Chimaira too damn much to even care about trying to compare them. Liverpool Academy seemed to go overboard on the smoke effects, as Chimaira took to the stage surrounded by clouds of smoke, and seemed to start every new track like that as well. They had their share of sound probs too, during the first few songs, but these were soon forgotten by the time they kicked into the old-school stuff. Let Go and Lumps were awesome, but Dead Inside got by far the best reception and stepped the atmosphere up about ten notches. By this point some of the crowd seemed to flip, which gave security something to do, thats for sure! Ricky stepped in, with a well timed drum solo during Severed though, and everyone kicked back and chilled to admire it. I’ve got a fuck of alot of appreciation for the guy after seeing that – my arms were fucking sore after tryina clap him for a minute odd, so gawd only knows what its like for him! After Severed finished my head was spinning no end, and even a day later, my memory’s still too distorted to be able to remember the rest of the set list. I remember the good ole Wall of Death during The Dehumanizing Process, which was pretty damn fun, and they did one of my fave tracks off TIOR aswell – Staring Through The Eyes of a Criminal. They didn’t do Army of Me though, like they did in Manchester…maybe they were running late or something. Heh, or maybe it was because Mark fucked up his leg and ended up pretty much hobbling round the stage for the last few tracks. Despite that, he still managed to totally energize the whole place for Pure Hatred, which was a killer note to end on. The crowd were still chanting away for Down Again, even when they were being kicked out, as well. All in all, it was a fucking peachy way to spend Valentine’s Day, and personally, I hope it encourages more bands of this nature to come through Liverpool, cause the crowds are crazy as anything.” x Sian x Thanks for writing in Sian – check your post.