The all ages 'Arc Unsigned' nights held at Stockton’s The Arc are seen as chance for the 'mainly' under 18’s of Teeside to enjoy bands and meet up with friends in a controlled and safe environment.  It also helps keep them off the streets for at least one night every fortnight. 

Sadly this arrangement has a few drawbacks, especially over my last couple of visits to the venue.  Firstly the kids seem increasingly less interested in the bands on show and are more interested in treating the place as a youth club, instead of a state of the art music venue.  Tonight was one of those more extreme evenings, which for the bands, some of whom had literally travelled hundreds of miles to appear on this stage here tonight, was a bit disheartening and makes you wonder how many of these travelling bands will be tempted to return to play again.

First on stage tonight were Welsh band Freeloader, who had already had a nightmare journey up to the gig.  They hit the stage as the doors opened and were half way through their short set before any sort of numbers entered the main hall.  Yes there were plenty of bodies in the building itself, but the majority of them were in the next room and standing around in the corridors, generally seeming to be totally uninterested that there were any bands here tonight.

The band I must say did give their all and although they seemed a little deflated on stage, acted like true pro’s and carried on with their set of hard edged stoner metal, which had some outstanding moments like ‘Love Lies Bleeding’, ‘Step Aside’ and ‘My Misery’ to name three. Even the band's rendition of the Tom Jones classic ‘Green Green Grass’ was interesting to say the least, but was totally lost on those who had actually bothered to come into the main hall to witness the band.  So my heart went out to Martin, Mark, David and Tim and I hope at least you covered your expenses tonight if nothing else.

The impressive set continued with ‘Try To Fly’ and ‘Unholy Trinity’ both big songs, both of which were totally lost of the youth of Stockton. 

The band showed they have a harder edged sound as they set about their new song ‘Devils Brigade’, which sounded really good.  You have to give frontman Mikey a lot of credit as he tried his damnedest to whip the audience into some sort of frenzy of activity.

The band rounded of the set off with one of my favourite tracks from their EP the superb ‘Kultura’.  Hopefully the band will not let this put them off coming back up from down South, maybe not to this particular venue, but there are plenty of venues where I’m sure you will have a lot more music lovers in the crowd.

Now on to Laconia, a band that seem to have been about for a dogs age and who I have seen on numerous occasions.  One thing about this band they have got to be one of the hardest working bands around the North East and one that won't shy away from a challenge, and tonight they certainly had their hands full.

Over the years Laconia’s sound has changed and now they are verging more into the metal genre than I’ve ever seen them before.  Opening up with ‘Waiting’, a real metal song with Scott’s vocals sounding sharp, which was quite astounding as later after the show we caught up with him at the bar before the band left, and he said the sound on stage had been abysmal.