It’s been a long time since I’ve been to an Alt-rock performance, with many of the alt-rock royalty of the early 2000’s not making it down this way since Soundwave Festival’s collapse. But on Saturday night I headed out to see Alt-Rock legends Trapt, a band many fans had resigned to never seeing in Australia, performed their very first show in Brisbane as part the final leg of their first ever tour of Australia supported by locals Archetypes and These Four Walls.
Archetypes opened up the night and despite a few minor technical issues at the commencement of their set, they put on a pretty good show that had the crowd engaged following that.
It wasn’t until second support band These Four Walls that the night really took form though. While Archetypes did a great job at warming the crowd up, These Four Walls had the sound, charisma and stage presence of a full blown headliner and I would have to say would probably be one of the best local support acts I have seen for almost any show over the past few years. Their intensity absolutely set the crowd on fire and their use of the small Crowbar stage made it seem like they were performing on an open football field which was a real pleasure to watch.
Having toured in almost every corner of the world since their inception, it’s almost surprising to think that nearly 20 years after their inception that Trapt still hadn’t made it down to Australia. Thankfully the Brisbane crowd made sure that this very special first tour was one to remember, by turning out in droves for what I could only describe as a near sold out crowd.
As the band took to the stage, the crowd erupted into excitement, cheering louder and louder as each member came on stage, with the largest cheers reserved for the enigmatic frontman Chris Taylor Brown himself.
I have to admit I was impressed at the way in which Brown engaged the crowd, including by grabbing hands with those in the front row, motioning towards any crowd member he could make eye contact with and even when he took up his guitar to perform he still managed to make it look as effortless as possible.
But it wasn’t a one man show, with other band members Pete Charrell (bass), David Sudock (guitar) and Brendan Hengle (drums) putting in a suitable effort on stage. There seemed to be a lot of crowd focus on guitarist Sudock from the crowd, and rightly so with some of his parts looking very clean.
The overall sound of the night was good, with no massively audible issues and sound running fine for the most part. Coupling the sound up with the bands light show on the small confines of the Crowbar stage and you had a performance that worked well on all angles.
This tour was touted as the band performing a collection of their hits over the span of their career and the setlist certainly didn’t disappoint with tracks like ‘Bring It’, ‘Passenger’ and ‘Black Rose’ all making appearances, but it was in crowd favourites ‘Echoes’ and ‘Headstrong’ that the band got the greatest reception.
While it might have taken what seemed like a lifetime to finally make it to down here, Brisbane lapped every moment of Trapt’s performance up. Factoring in how successful this show was, let’s hope it doesn’t take the band another 20 years to make it down this way again.