Artist: H.E.A.T. & Lost weekend

Venue:  Rios, Leeds

Date:  19 March 2009 

Year after year one band or another sets tongues a-wagging amongst the Melodic Rock crowd and over the past few months the band on everyone’s lips is Sweden’s H.E.A.T.

The band sent the first ripples after their appearance at last years Firefest and the waves have never stopped lashing against the shores of the Melodic Rock genre since.  Some say the band are the saviours of the genre, some disagree, so when the band announced a small UK tour we thought we'd better check out the band and see what all the fuss was about. 

Well the second night of the bands tour saw them playing Leeds Rio’s, a venue that we frequent rather more than any venues in Newcastle, but that’s another tale.

So after a short 90 mile trip down we entered the smallest of the venues rooms, which did make me wonder just how many tickets had been bought for the show prior to the show.

It was around 8.30 pm that support act Lost Weekend hit the stage, a band that themselves held the mantle of saviours of British Melodic Rock, although the band have always been more of the bridesmaid and never the bride and tonight it was more of the same. The band weren’t bad, but in comparison to what was to come, the British contingent were left as second best tonight.

They opened up their account with ‘Forever Moving On’ and it was clear that Paul and the rest of the band were up for the show and even though the small stage meant the band seemed a little cramped, this didn’t seem to stop them giving their all.

They continued their set with a few songs off their latest album 'Fear And Innocence', first it was the album opener ‘The Eagle’, with guitarist Dave Thompson playing out of his skin.  Then this was quickly followed by ‘Only The Strong Survive’, a more up tempo rocker with Utley giving us his best Gary Barden vocal of the night.

With the majority of the set taken from the new album with only a couple of older tracks those in the crowd looking for a best of set would have been disappointed, except for the likes of ‘Don’t Go’ to keep those die hard fans at bay.

The best of the set would have to have been the closer ‘Stone Hearted Woman', a bass infused funk rocker that went down well, as did all the songs tonight.  Let's hope their Firefest show later this year has a few older numbers in as well as a sprinkling of new ones. 

Now on to H.E.A.T., a band that I was expecting nothing of and when they came on stage I thought that this small room must have been a time machine because the band came on stage in garb associated with the early 80's era, with the drummer in lycra, the rhythm guitarist in top hat complete with feather and more bouffant hair than the entire cast of Dynasty.  I was expecting a scantly clad lifeguard in a red swimsuit to come out of the wings in slow motion at this point.

But when the band started playing all this was swept away instantly as they opened up with ‘There For You’, it was clear this band were going to be something special with the vocals of Kenny Leckremo the highlight.  I mean this guy has some set of pipes on him!

The band kept it going with the stunning ‘Late Night Lady’, again Leckremo was superb and the guitar duo of Dave Dalone and Eric Rivers was just magical.  It was clear from this point on that the hype behind this particular band was truly justified.

And as each song followed the other the night just got better and better, with ‘Straight For Your Heart’ and the fantastic ‘Bring The Stars’, which induced a sing-a-long from those fortunate to be here tonight.  This even came as a shock to Leckremo who was visibly taken aback by the audience reaction.

Leckremo then announced one of the many highlights of the set the excellent ‘Cry’, a song that sounds great on album but live it’s was just superb and again the crowd were right behind the band singing their hearts out.

It was straight into ‘Feel It Again’, another classy slice of Melodic Rock from the Swedes, as the magnificent set continued it high quality with one of my favourites off the album ‘Feel The Heat’.  This is pure gold old school rock brought kicking and screaming into the now with Leckremo doing a damn fine Ronnie James on this one.

The band didn’t give you a chance to catch you breath as it was straight into ‘’Never Let Go’ before eventually bringing it down a little with the bluesy ‘Straight Up’.

The band rounded off the main part of the set with the superb arena rocker ‘Fill Your Head With Rock’.  The band left the stage to rapturous applause and cheers of "HEAT! HEAT! HEAT!" and it wasn’t long before the band were back on stage and seemed genuinely honoured by the response as they set about rewarding the crowd with ‘1.000 Miles’ before finishing off in style with ‘Keep On Dreaming’, again another superb song.

The band really put on a show tonight, despite the low numbers they gave the same performance as if 10.000 were present, but one thing that was more a great divide between the two bands, the North Sea divides Britain from the rest of Europe and tonight I witnessed a divide in music that was oceans apart and that makes me sad that this great Isle can't compete with our Euro cousins.

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