Tonight Alive @ O2 Ritz (Manchester, UK) on March 6, 2018 [Photos & Show Review]

For the last week or so, good parts of the UK have been battered by snow storms from across Europe. Although the snow and icy winds have subsided it’s still a pretty grim night as we head into Manchester to catch the opening night of Tonight Alive’s UK tour in support of new album Underworld. Thankfully, as the band and vocalist Jenna Mcdougall bounce onto the stage and into “Book Of Love”, quickly followed by crowd faves “Lonely Girl” and “The Ocean”, all thoughts of the shitty weather outside are well and truly forgotten.

Now, whereas most opening nights are used to iron out sound gremlins and shake off the road rust, there are very few of the former and no evidence of the latter as the group glide effortlessly through their set. “Oxygen” midway through the set sees the band strip it back to just an acoustic guitar, Jenna and a thousand or so extra voices while “To Be Free”, “Hell and Back” and “The Other Side” see them head down the home straight with Mcdougall joking “does it feel like we’ve blinked and reached this point?”.

She has a point though, it feels like time has flown by as the band smash out hit single “The Edge” although, if we’re being honest, we could have probably done without the lengthy diatribe from Mcdougall prior to the song. That minor gripe aside, we’ve seen plenty of first nights that have gone much worse than this so, if you’re still undecided about heading out in this run of bad weather to catch the band, let us tell you, on this evidence it will be well worth your effort.