British rock giants Kasabian made an explosive return to Cardiff International Arena (formerly Motorpoint Arena), touring their new album The Alchemist’s Euphoria. Despite the awful weather that greeted us, we left the venue absolutely elated. Supporting Kasabian on this tour is The Lathums, a relatively young indie band hailing from Wigan; they were one of the best support acts I’ve ever seen. Their set was only 30 minutes long but they easily could have had a headline slot: with impressive vocals and fresh songwriting, The Lathums are certainly ones to watch out for!
The CIA stage had a catwalk extending out into the audience, allowing newly appointed frontman Sergio Pizzorno to command the crowd from a more intimate position. Being sat in the North Balcony, I had a great view of the crowd and the substantial number of mosh pits that were formed throughout Kasabian’s set. They opened with the high-energy ROCKET FUEL from their newest album, exciting the audience and hyping them up. This buzz continued for the rest of the performance, even more so for the tracks that followed. After this came three of their most loved songs, each one being met with roars of applause and many a mosh pit. Club Foot was well appreciated by the audience, Ill Ray (The King) was nothing short of spectacular and was one of my favourite performances of the night, while Underdog had Pizzorno encouraging the crowd to open up a huge mosh pit. Kasabian had the right idea to include their bigger hits at the beginning of the set as this lifted the mood of the audience and kept them in high spirits for the remainder of their set.
There weren’t many breaks between songs which meant the tracks flowed brilliantly, but on occasion Pizzorno held a competition between the left and right sides of the crowd to see who could sing the loudest (for those wondering, the right side won every time), and his interactions with the audience meant that Kasabian really did enjoy performing for us. The crowd were having a blast: during You’re In Love With a Psycho, a chain of people on top of shoulders formed, and everyone at the front was more than willing to join the mosh pits. A special shoutout goes to the guy who did a backflip in the centre of a mosh pit – we were very impressed. It appeared that Kasabian’s goal was to unite the audience with their music, and they did just that.
As well as the audience, Kasabian themselves seemed to be having a lot of fun onstage. It’s refreshing to see a band visibly enjoy their performances; even though the band must be exhausted from touring, they definitely didn’t show it. Understandably, a large number of the songs performed were from their new release, but the audience loved it nonetheless. The crowd practically begged the band to return to the stage for the encore, which consisted of Bless This Acid House, L.S.F. and Fire. Kasabian’s entire set was on another level of incredible, but they managed to save the best until last. Fire, their biggest hit, was the perfect end to a brilliant performance, and brought the crowd together one final time.
