Is it Thursday or Saturday night?! Sleep Theory transform an ordinary evening into a party to remember in a heaving O2 Forum Kentish Town.
Originally scheduled for The Dome up the road, Sleep Theory have leapfrogged into a room four times the size of the one they originally booked for their first time in the capital, and it’s full. Rammed. This is for the better. They weren’t meant to be confined to basements – in fact, they treat this room like it’s twice, even three times, its size.
The Tennessee alt.metallers have exploded because they fundamentally understand what the people want. They know that underneath the hard shell of a metalhead is a soft heart that loves an infectious chorus, and appealing to that has brought them to a stage bands rarely play after just one album. Tonight, it feels like all this upgrading is still completely inadequate.
In here, any notion of genre is being put through a meat grinder. The Pretty Wild are seeing to that first and foremost, proving that their sparkling energy cannot be confined to the corner. Everything about the Wylde sisters’ wickedly theatrical songs sizzles with the confidence that only a pair of divas, in the most honourable sense of the phrase, can wield.
The quickfire rapping of Paradox is a thing of awe, while Living Ded is a flash-forward to Halloween and Infrared radiates an inner cool, though it’s diffused by moments of endearingly genuine stage chat. “We’re a long way from home,” Jules admits, “but you guys make it feel like our own home.”
Less than half an hour later, the 2,000-capacity Forum feels like a home Sleep Theory are already outgrowing. Having splashed the extra ticket money on twinkling lights and small-scale video screens, their aesthetic screams ‘arena-lite’, begging to be expanded to a bigger stage.
From the booming first note of opener Fallout to the slamming breakdown of Enough, their aspirations for greatness are writ large, and every single person here is swept along them. In fact, at points, this crowd swoons for them. A Boyz II Men cover dedicated to the ladies of the room raises the temperature by several degrees thanks to the Southern charm of vocalist Cullen Moore, as does the squeal-eliciting version of NSYNC*’s Bye Bye Bye. “Who was the girl who was twerking on me and headbutting me? Almost knocked me out!” he remarks.
As they thunder on, the excitement peaks again and again. Paralysed funnels bucketloads of pain into slick catharsis, while they roll back to their early days of viral gold with the rather beautiful Another Way, affirming that a 17-second video really can cause gigantic ripples in an entire music ecosystem. The same could be said for their suave cover of Taylor Swft’s Cruel Summer – “Yeeaah, we’re all Swifties,” Cullen offers by means of introduction – before they round things off with the power trio of Stuck In My Head, a masterly Numb (“No, no, you’re not doing it right!” Cullen chides the crowd’s giant singalong before the riff drops) and the uproarious party vibes of Static, sending confetti raining down on the jumping crowd.
Whatever’s in Sleep Theory’s secret sauce is working, and it sure as hell pops live. Any notions of conformity or expectation have truly been steamrollered here tonight, with absolutely no pretense – just pure, hype-fulfilling, purist-irking fun.
