For the past two days, wild weather has been ripping through the city causing havoc on the roads and the transport system. Yet, by some miracle, the clouds have lifted just in time for the boys to grace the stage and every fan has made it into the warm, inner sanctum of The Metro Theatre without a drop of rain on them.
The punters tonight are by definition: dedicated. They're the kind of black t-shirt wearing, piercing filled, older generation who live by rock nostalgia. They can track The Ataris back for most (if not all) of the band's 21-year history and have been literally waiting 7 years since the band was last here, for their return.
The Ataris do not disappoint. On stage, lead singer Kris Roe is every bit your seasoned rocker. He follows a hand-written set list, tunes his guitar before each and every song and casually talks to the crowd as if it was just another day.
When the guitars start it feels like home. Roe screams out favourites 'The Saddest Song', 'In This Diary', 'Eight of Nine' and the biggest crowd-pleaser 'Boys of Summer', and the crowd screams them all back word-for-word.
When Roe drops the lyrics, the crowd only screams them in his absence that much louder. And when a song rolls into its signature, instrumental interlude, it's like sanctity on stage. The crowd hushes in reverence, worshiping the killer riffs escalating on stage in front of their eyes, praying that it won't be another seven years until The Ataris returns.
Amen to that.
