Sleeping With Sirens – Manchester O2 Ritz

It’s a Sunday night of emo classics tonight at O2 Ritz Manchester, with Sleeping With Sirens on their Headline tour with Cemetery Liars and Static Dress supporting.

Cemetery Liars kick off this Sunday night with probably the lighter side of rock for the night. All dressed head to toe in black, all four members take to the stage to get this crowd pumped. And to be fair they do their job perfectly, everyone here has their hands in the air and they’re moving around and the energy is slowly beginning to pump through their veins.

With a sound that’s very similar to Don Broco they’re really grabbing the audience tonight! So many here may not have been aware of who these guys were before but the attention has been grabbed for sure. The vocalist has a soft voice and the stage presence of the typical egotistical frontman but in a very wholesome way cares about his fans.

They all have this mysterious edgy presence but they sell themselves as these majorly lovely guys.

As we get halfway through their set the dreariness of the first half fades away and you’re welcome with a very The Killers sound and it picks up and everything gets lively with the sound of hope and anticipation instead of sadness and depression. Switching the mood in the room massively.

If you’ve made a room of edgy emo kids smile with their hands in the air, without them knowing who you are, you’ve sold the show and that’s exactly what Cemetery Liars have done.

Completely different vibe now with Leeds’ own Static Dress, making the room way more heavy! And with a hell of a lot more chaotic energy.

Their stage set up is just simple with some static tv screens on both sides of the stage with direct orders to the crowd to go nuts!

There’s hardly a second where frontman, Olli Appleyard, isn’t moving or doing something dramatic and your eyes can’t leave either him or their guitarist, who is sporting a science labcoat and a black mask with ears on top of the head and which covers his entire face . You might not be able to see his face but he definitely saw the amount of “metal head appreciation” faces as he kills it with the riffs, the more chug the harder the face.

And he delivered with the beautiful, chuggy riffs.

Static Dress are an interesting band to see, but if you see them on the line up at any festivals I wouldn’t say no to seeing them live again purely just for the chaos of the guys.

So one thing that was a downside to tonight is that the promoter has overbooked the sheer amount of photographers for the night and has denied access to the Photo pit for Sleeping With Sirens, due to safety regulations.

But it was time for Sleeping With Sirens to take to the stage, I saw these guys 7 years ago when I was in College on their Madness tour which was the last time they toured the UK on their own headline tour. Kellin came out looking like he was doing a Billy Joe Armstrong cosplay, with the black skinny jeans, buttoned up short sleeve black shirt and bright red tie and messy black hair to complete the ensemble.

Despite their latest album Complete Collapsecoming out lately, this tour’s setlist holds a huge mix of the past decade, which for a fan of the past decade makes me pretty happy.

Kicking off which a song I wouldn’t except Break me Downwhich to be fair is a solid start

Sleeping With Sirens, like previous times I’ve seen them live, is killing it, the energy is on another level and Kellin’s voice hasn’t changed with time at all. It’s the same as its always been, over the years you’ve seen different opinions when it comes to his voice but tonight everyone is loving every single second.

As much as I love Kellin’s voice and I always have done since the moment I got into Sleeping With Sirens’ music this was a weird night, his voice was perfect throughout each and every song on the set list however, after each song he would end it with an additional section of vocals that had a higher pitch and it was a weird addition that for me would’ve worked if it wasn’t put on the end of every song. I could tell from around me some people noticed this, but some people were completely oblivious and just were loving every second of the performance.

The energy of Justin (guitarist) andKellin was amazing, the way they interacted with the crowd and made everyone who had loved them for over a decade’s night perfect. You had a mix of new and older fans here tonight.

One part I wouldn’t have put on the cards for the night was an acoustic set, for me one of my favourite things about Sleeping With Sirens is their acoustic albums no matter how many times they can make me cry, so naturally this moment was an emotional one. Not only for me but I could see a lot of tears coming to people’s eyes around me. Especially as the intro to Scene Five: With Ears to See, With Eyes to Hear, kicks in Kellin stands centre stage, the lights go down and is instantly lit up around the room with everyone’s phone lights.

The only issue I had with the whole performance from the acoustic section, would have to have been during the performance for Roger Rabbit where Kellin randomly in the middle of this slow and heartfelt song starts beatboxing. No one knows why this isn’t a thing that they have done before, and it made no sense when it came to the actual song itself.

The crowd had energy throughout the entire night, the guitars were perfect along with bass and drums, with everything blending in perfectly with Kellin’s vocals. Giving everyone the true 2010 emo nostalgia that we all needed on a Sunday night, with all the songs that myself and my teen angst needed. And what way to make the crowd more rowdy than announcing that for the next song everyone tonight is going to be part of the bands new music video for Ctrl + Alt + Del, everyone forces their way forward to try and make sure they have their moment on the camera. I won’t lie as someone who wanted to apply for previous Sleeping With Sirens music videos, when I was a teenager I remember that feeling all too well.

The night ended with two of the bands most known songs of their career, giving everyone who has been there for years the memories and the nostalgia that they came here for. If I’m James Dean, You’re Audrey Hepburn and If You Can’t Hang coming off the band’s first two studio albums. The crowd goes nuts, phones go flying into the air to record the moment, which was a major downside to the show, the sheer amount of phones recording the entire gig.

The mosh pits get open and the old screams start coming out, it’s like we’ve all gone back to 2010, our hair has gone to the side and we have our fringe over our eyes hiding us from seeing what’s going on, but we’re all emos so we don’t care it’s all about the music.

The show ends with If You Can’t Hang, before the lights go up and the confetti falls everywhere and I Wanna Dance With Somebody gets played by the DJ and we all leave the venue.

Sleeping With Sirens are always a band I feel like you have to see if you were an emo in the 2010 era, their music to me has always been massively underrated and deserves the recognition more. They’re back to a sound that’s from their 2010 era, and you need to listen to The Complete Collapse, their new album that’s out now.

Set List: