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So you want to know what a Cherry Scream gig is like? Check out this review on Lemonrock Gig Guide written by reviewer Jay Sharman:

Rating 5/6 : Very Enjoyable Cherry Scream - shout it out! Shoot Pool Bar, Aylesbury on Fri 25th Jan 13
Top Tip - if you are new to Aylesbury, Shootpool is tucked away on a side road in the centre and can easily be missed. Once you are inside via the main doors (these are closed later on to give access via a side door only) there are two stage areas on either side before you get to the bar area.

Anyway, Cherry Scream played there on Friday night supporting The Peerless Pirates and, due to name of the headline act, Cherry Scream, and most of the audience were in pirate themed fancy dress with one member of the audience even sporting a parrot on her shoulder (cue renditions of the dead parrot sketch, as it kept falling off!), with a lot of the song titles given that 'pirate twist' by Vocalist, Chloe.

Opening with Poison's "Look What the Cat Dragged In", gave a nod to the band's influences, i.e. mid to late 1980's glam/hair metal which was also evident in the original material they played, two of which "Adrenaline High" and "Hungry For Your Love " went down as well as the covers that were played, which is always a good sign of how much of a band following there was in the crowd on the night and how enjoyable the original material was.

In keeping with the sense of fun and character of the evening, lyrics in "Talk The talk (Walk The Walk") changed to "Walk the plank" as was a later performance of Kiss's "Love Gun" which was cheekily introduced by Chloe as "Love Cannon"
In fact, throughout the gig Chloe's banter and easy rapport with the audience went some way in demonstrating the growing following the band has built up since having first formed in 2011.

Complementing this, there was great audience participation in the chorus of Skid Row's big hit "Youth Gone Wild" which suited Chloe's vocals to a 'T' and her take on Sebastian Bach blended well with Max's riffing. From this point in the gig onwards, Dean - on drums - elongated the song endings (egged on by the audience) grinning manically while he whacked the living daylights out of his drum kit. Great Fun!

The riff-heavy "Live wire" by Motley Crüe was punctuated by bouts of furious head banging by the singer, which is always good to see and for the non-rock fan I went to the gig with the band's enthusiastic launch into Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" proved to him that Ozzy really did have a career before reality TV!

When this song started I was interested to see how Max was going to deal with the challenging Randy Rhoads solo, as it involved a lot of high speed picking and hammer/pull off arpeggios, but I need not have worried. Max acquitted himself very well on this, especially since he wasn't using his regular guitar.

I must include a word about the bass player, Mitch, whose bass lines rumbled steadily in the background throughout the band's performance, providing a firm platform for the songs. Gotta say his stage persona was exactly how a bass player in a metal band should look like!

Closing with my favourite of the night, AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" was like icing on the cake for me and allowed for plenty of crowd participation and had me wishing Max would adopt the Angus 'duck walk' across the stage!

As I may have mentioned earlier, I went to this gig with a non-rock fan, who had never been to a rock/metal gig before. I had hoped it would be an eye opener for my friend to this genre of music, often lambasted/lampooned unfairly by the media and Cherry Scream did not let me down. They showed everyone that night what a rock/metal gig is all about: tight playing, a high level of musicianship and a let's have fun attitude.
jay sharman, Mon 28th Jan 13

The original review can be found on Lemonrock Gig Guide:

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