Live Review: Punk Rock Factory – Excellent Adventure Tour – Lafayette, London

Punk Rock and Pop Culture have an awful lot in common when you really think about it so when Punk Rock Factory offers you a night of nostalgia in the form of punk rock covers you would be a little foolish to turn it down. Headlining King Cross’ Lafayette, the band had enlisted the support of Say It Anyway to open up proceedings. Here’s what went down!

During the intervals between bands, Sean Smith could be found DJ’ing a mix of classic punk and emo tracks to build up the excitement for what was to come. Once Say It Anyway took to the stage, you got a real feeling of excitement emanating from the crowd. Their full force Punky attitude rubbed off well on the London crowd with fans quickly loosening up and starting to get their dancing shoes on as their set progressed. Considering the band has not been touring for long, they captured the crowd’s attention with ease and ended up leaving to a rather loud round of applause! 

After some more bangers being laid down by Sean Smith, Punk Rock Factory would take to the stage and open with ‘Everybody’ to a huge reaction! Unfortunately, Ryan Steadman would suffer from technical difficulties on his guitar so instead of going into ‘Under The Sea’ like planned, Peej Edwards would try and entertain the crowd before busting out old faithful in the form of ‘Spongebob Squarepants’.

After trial and tribulation, the issue were fixed and the set would continue with a barrage of heavy hitters! ‘Under The Sea’ would be followed by ‘Pokemon’ before the band would play their first single off the upcoming album ‘It’s Just A Stage We’re Going Through’ titled ‘Rewrite The Stars’. The reaction to the new song was extremely positive as the fans in attendance who knew the words echoed the band and those who didn’t put their energy into dancing and headbanging!

This set was jam-packed with everything you could have asked for. ‘You’re Welcome’ had one of the loudest sing-a-long parts of the set during Mowi’s rap, ‘You’ll Be Back’ rallied the team back together for a punchy few minutes and a second performance of ‘Sponegbob Squarepants’ was met with an even louder reaction than the first. 

Other stand-out moments from the set came in the form of tracks such as ‘Last Resort’ which saw Sean Smith deliver an angst-filled vocal performance, a performance of the unreleased single ‘Defying Gravity’ and a mammoth sing-a-long to ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’. Closing out the set was ‘How Far I’ll Go’ followed by an encore of the heaviest song of the night… ‘Let It Go’!

As a whole, Punk Rock Factory put on a show that captivated everyone in attendance. Their sheer charisma and attitude to the music they perform allow them to put on a show quite unlike anything I’ve seen in a long time. Be sure to try and catch them on their UK tour this October!