by Sian Parry

Being a long-time fan of Buckcherry, I felt that the travel down to London from the West Midlands was very worth it. I had received a few sniggers from friends that I had chosen to see them over amazing polish death metaller's Vader who were playing across the road at The Underworld but I knew this would be a great night of pure enjoyment of dancing and singing to every single lyric so it weren't really a hard choice for me.

I arrived in the venue to find G.U. Medicine taking to the stage. There was a poor excuse for a crowd and for those who were there, hardly anyone seemed interested in paying attention to their music. I amused myself with the reference that the main singer looked like a metalled up version of Leonard from The Big Bang Theory which I giggled at for quite some time. Don't get me wrong, they weren't a bad band but I just couldn't get in to them. I noticed I much preferred the sound of the backing singer/ guitarist's voice but they weren't to my taste.

By the time Slaves To Gravity came on stage, the audience was really filling up nicely. Now these I could get in to. I had heard good things about them before the gig and was eager to pay attention. The audience seemed to respond in the same way also by cheering and clapping at the end of each song, unlike the reaction to G.U. Medicine. They have been around for a few years now and wholeheartedly deserve the good rep that they have received.

Irrespective of the support, there was only one band that everyone was there to see… Buckcherry! I admittedly was a bit clueless as to what to expect from them. Personally being a fan myself, I love Buckcherry's lesser known, slow ballads such as "Black Butterfly" and "All of me" and I couldn't imagine a set containing them with such a hyped up, animated crowd. But either way, they didn't disappoint and are on top form as a band.
The first five songs came in the order of "Dead", "Rescue Me", "All Night Long", "Everything" and "It's A Party". If I was to go home then, I would have been happy but no, they had more. Every single word was sung along to and you could feel such an amazing atmosphere in the air.

Main singer, Josh Todd goes on to give us a brief story before the next song, explaining the meaning as the first time he ever took cocaine with "Lit Up", an obvious crowd pleaser.
The rest of the show carried on in the perfect way it started off with big hits such as "Recovery", "Dirty Mind" and my personal favourite "Sorry". It's a given that the last song wouldn't be to everyone's taste so what better way to pick up the pace but to play Buckcherrys most well-known track "Crazy Bitch".

Buckcherry left the stage for an uncomfortable amount of time leaving most audience members, including myself, questioning whether the night was over, so much so quite a few people had even left. But alas, they came back on stage to play the final two tracks "Borderline" and "Crush".

All in all, the night was perfect and I got what I expected out of it- sore feet and lack of a voice.