Festivals are back so are small shows in between. On this Monday 20 June, Stick To Your Guns and One Step Closer were playing at The Black Lab in Northern France. And as expected, it was a s(t)ick show like we’ve missed so much in 2020-2021!
Every summer, when Covid doesn’t cancel everything, the bands play huge festivals but have to fill-in the dates in between. Sometimes with some big packages. Sometimes with some small shows. Stick To Your Guns are in the second category with this small show in Wasquehal, just next to Lille. Small venue, no barrier, about 300 people.
Because we decided very last-minute to attend this show, we unfortunately missed the set of One Step Closer and arrived only 5 minutes before Stick To Your Guns started – a bit earlier than scheduled.Just the time to discover this “new” venue, grab a beer, get the confirmation the stage is without barrier and not high (you know what it means) and see that there are window in the roof and nothing to hide the bright light of the Sun… on the the brightest day of the year! So we started the show with full lights which was weird during 1 or 2 songs. The time to be fully in the mood to sing along and mosh with the American band!
We expected a show a bit special with some surprises: let be clear, we just hope they’ll add This Is More in the set-list. But we just got a classic set like they do on most of the festivals they’re playing this Summer – when the schedule allows it. Tonight, the timetable announced 1h of show for Stick To Your Guns but after a few songs, Jesse told us: “I don’t know whose stupid idea it was to give us an hour of set but we’ll do our best”. They played exactly 52 minutes.
Only hits, classics and 2 new songs (Weapon, More Of Us Than Them), the set-list was strong and intense. Like the show. Start with a trio Nobody/Weapon/Doomed By You was perfect to wake up everyone. Before the sing-along part with We Still Believe and What Choice Did You Give Us. Not a lot of speeches from Jesse tonight – which is really rare but maybe have a link to what happened recently on Twitter – which can explain why the show went so fast.
The album “Diamond” was the most represented tonight with 6 songs (on the 15 played). A proof this album is still the favorite from the fans. And maybe a hint for the shows going on later on this tour… Since the Covid, they changed their logo replaced by their old one: another hint they wanna go back to their roots? We’ll have the answer on July 29th with their upcoming album “Spectres”. Until then, we had a sick show on a Monday evening moshing on their best songs like Married To The Noise, Amber or Against Them All.
Set-list: Nobody, Weapon, Doomed By You, We Still Believe, What Choice Did You Give Us, The Bound, More Of Us Than Them, Nothing You Can Do To Me, The Sun The Moon The Truth, Married To The Noise, Empty Heads, Amber, Diamond, Such Pain, Against Them All.
Stick To Your Guns prove they are still one of the best hardcore bands right now! We missed them. Seems they missed us too. It’s great to see that the scene in the North part of France has some good venues like this. We’ll be back in Lille. And we’ll be back at a STYG show for sure… we heard they gonna play in Belgium in November!