Gig review: Catfish and the Bottlemen at O2 Academy Leeds

It’s 7pm when I head down to the O2 Academy in Leeds and over 2,000 people begin to pour into the venue, it’s soon filled to the rafters and exploding with the excitement of what is to come later that evening.

First on stage are Little Comets, it’s good old fashioned indie music and they get the crowd geared up good and proper for the main act of the evening.

A few minutes late Catfish and The Bottlemen take to the stage, opening with crowd favourite, ‘Rango’. One thing can be said, nor the band or the crowd hold anything back – we’re just a few songs into the set with ‘Pacifier’ and the venue is a sea of crowdsurfers washing over the barrier.

The band had various unimportant technical and crowd issues throughout the night which involved them leaving and returning to the stage during the last song ‘Tyrants’ but this didn’t stop the Welsh rockers from putting on an amazing show. Perhaps that’s why their energy is so infectious, and why the entire venue saw what is likely to be one of the most energetic crowds to date.

By the time they had finished, the balcony felt like it was about to cave in due to the about of jumping.

Catfish and The Bottlemen are a guitar band and that’s nothing new, but their songs and the way they approach them are. In a genre that’s been done to death, they are unexpectedly unique and their live shows even more so.

They wowed this Leeds crowd and powered through the technical difficulties to pull off one of the most entertaining live shows I’ve ever seen.

Gig date: March 23