By Sebastian Mackay

Date / Venue: Saturday August 2nd, Powerstation, Auckland

I Am Giant played last night. But if Shelton [Woolright, drummer] had called in sick with a broken hand or Ed[Martin, vocalist] tore through his voice box you could have left them off the set and we all could have gone home after Villainy. Seriously. Now, that's not to say I Am Giant weren't, well, giant. Not at all. But I'll get to that.

Setting Fire To Stacey (SFTS) was like watching a Terror show. They were (God, here come the fire puns) able to light the place up and burned through a set to which I knew none of the words. But the crowd did. They lapped it up like dogs to vomit. They earned their right to be there and they didn't waste a single second.

There was something of a revival about last night's show. Ekko Park's frontman proclaimed "rock's not dead!" and while everyone in the industry is freaking out, there was a packed and f'n sweaty room of people that disagree with every drop of worry coming from music's fat cats. Black River Drive carried that momentum (their fans are everywhere!) through their set and by the time Bullet For Your Gun came on the apparently meek girl beside me was ready to rip someone's face off and then trample all over it.

Villainy is where shit got violent. It got rough. As one guy put it "it's getting pretty rowdy!". If SFTS had the crowd like dogs to vomit then we were maggots in a corpse over Villainy's new song Safe Passage. They threw in some of what's been rousing crowds since they were playing at the Kings Arms way back when (Another Time, The Answer, Alligator Skin) and incited the first "one more song" chants. Epic.

But the headline. The Main Event. The reason you're reading this and that I was sandwiched between a voluptuous blonde and ownerless sweaty man armpit. Shelton burst out dressed as a Mexican wrestler and Ed was going mental from the second they stepped on stage. It doesn't matter that they've played festivals inPoland, they were happy to be there. They covered Slipknot's Duality with a single guitar and Ed howling into a mic (awesome but weird, really weird) and of course the favourites. On City Limits and Neon Sunrise Ed had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand. It was a tidal wave of vocals and everyone dug deep to match Ed's high notes. Death Of You and Razor Wire Reality had people being flung from one side of the room to the other and Standing On The Sun was no different. I'd never been to an I Am Giant show before and there was no better place to start than the Science And Survival release tour.

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