LIVE REVIEW: The Fall of Troy, Tiny Moving Parts, Terrible Love, Cathouse Rock Club, Glasgow, 11/09/2016

The Fall of Troy triumphantly return to Glasgow for the first time since reuniting (although they played Edinburgh last year), armed with a new album’s worth of material. Playing at the Cathouse, they are supported by melodic hardcore outfit Terrible Love, and emo group Tiny Moving Parts.

Terrible Love are up first, and give a pretty good performance. Their style of modern melodic hardcore sounds a bit derivative, but there’s something there that sounds slightly off-kilter, and it’s possible there’s more than meets the ear on first listen. In this setting they make for an enjoyable warm-up act, but may be going places in the future.

The differences in the main part of the crowd between Tiny Moving Parts and the headline band is notable. Being a younger band, they attract a younger group of fans, while the bulk of people who are here for The Fall of Troy are a bit older – like the band themselves. Tiny Moving Parts are a great choice to support The Fall of Troy, as they sound like the latter band, but reinvented in the style of pop-punk and emo. Although they might initially sound a bit like The Story So Far or Modern Baseball (and they do), there’s a certain depth and technicality to their music: it’s catchy and danceable without being entirely vapid. And it’s nice to see a modern-sounding version of the math rock and progressive rock tendencies exhibited by The Fall of Troy. Hopefully, some older fans have been introduced to some younger music of the same style, and vice-versa.

Tiny Moving Parts frontman Dylan Mathieson projects an uber-friendly, all-American demeanour on stage, and it would be almost annoying if it didn’t come across as genuine, which it definitely does, as meeting him briefly after the band played proved.

The Fall of Troy themselves put on an absolutely stunning, no-nonsense show. There’s barely any on stage banter – none at all, in fact, until fairly late on in their set. And even then, it’s only to thank the audience for coming, or tell them about their latest album, OK, and how it’s available for free online.

Although the band play a sizeable amount of material from that album, they do give equal importance in their setlist to older material, especially later in their set. We’re not sure of the exact setlist, but the songs played encompassed every era of The Fall of Troy‘s history, in a way that surely pleased even the most diehard of fans.

The songs themselves are played extraordinarily well, too. Because The Fall of Troy‘s recorded output sounds largely like a bonkers clusterfuck of ideas (in a good way), it’s easy not to pick up on the fact that they’re all extremely talented musicians, technically. This is most prominent in Thomas Erak‘s guitar playing, as he’s able to play demanding guitar parts flawlessly without it descending into wankery. However, the whole band are really tight – especially for a three-piece – and the guitar playing on its own wouldn’t stand up, in a live setting, without the rhythm section of Tim Ward and Andrew Forsman to back it up.

This is especially on display in their penultimate song of the night (before closer F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X., the obvious choice), a stunning extended rendition of Macaulay McCulkin, which embodies all the positive traits of progressive music, being ridiculously technical but still interesting to the average listener.

OK proved that The Fall of Troy were back in a big way, and this live show cements that point by way of a fantastic showcasing of their incredible musicianship.

9/10

Written by: Alan Cunningham

Photos by: Julian Bailey