Smash more gigs!

Whenever we play venues we've never been to before there is a certain sense of anticipation. Will it be dingy? Dank? Will the sound system be appalling? Will it be too small? Too large? Will we get a decent dressing room?

Sometimes, things work out much, much better than you could possibly imagine, and that's what happened to us last Thursday.

The Forum, Hatfield opened in September 2009 and is one of the premiere live music venues in Hertfordshire. Built at a cost of £38m, it boasts a total capacity of 2,000 people over three rooms and has already hosted acts such as will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, Doves, Scouting for Girls, Taio Cruz, Enter Shikari and N-Dubz.

Situated on campus at the University of Hertfordshire, it also acts as a massively impressive venue for student union events, such as Jam Jar - the night that we played at.

So anyway, we rocked up and sound-checked, whilst technical folk scurried around sorting out lighting, monitoring, smoke machines, etc. (All of us except Owen, who managed to be 3 HOURS LATE for soundcheck. Nice one...) and wondering how many people would turn up to such a big venue.

The answer was lots! It's a bit of a no-brainer, really: free entry, pound-a-pint, free parking (for those not taking advantage of the pound-a-pint promotion, of course), great venue... makes me wonder why we ever bother playing dingy basement venues in London that are £8 to get in, and over £3 a pint!

Seriously, though, the whole student union experience far outweighed the recent forays into London. The crowd were much more responsive, the venue was much more impressive, the staff were much more accommodating - whether this is just a great advert for The Forum or whether it's the norm for such venues we'll wait and see, but for now I'm crossing my fingers for more University gigs!

Anyway, here's a snippet from the gig - our opening track from the show, "Underwater". Enjoy!

PS: If you haven't already, head over to SoundCloud to download our latest free single NOW!