With a crowd initially more interested in flinging around wet straw than anything happening on stage, they were right to worry. Even Paul's dangerous declaration "if you're not going to dance, then throw mud" elicits no response. So, with Colin prowling the stage, crawling over monitors and constantly screaming exhortations to "ROCK!!" and Paul throwing out his legs at improbable angles, Hundred Reasons do the only thing possible and play this damp afternoon slot like it was the biggest night of their lives.
Consequently, if the Belgians are at first confounded by these Brits and their leader with the wayward hair, a significant minority soon warm to their rabid assault on the senses. Quite right too, as they play a brilliant set of fearsome directness. Opener 'I'll Find You' detonates like a bomb in a silage tank, 'Dissolve' throws up huge grinding angles of noise, 'Silver' is raw-throated, multi-layered and a ruthlessly-executed belter, while the heart-wrenching new single 'Falter' proves they can do the quiet stuff and trust in their inbuilt angst bullshit detector to avoid being maudlin.
Not that it's all serious. Hundred Reasons do cheesy too - appearing to a tape of Europe's 'The Final Countdown' and encouraging people to clap their hands to the mellower moments or wave them maniacally to the faster ones. They're consummate entertainers. Even when the audience is not that interested in being entertained.
Displaying the form that's lifted them above all their Britrock contemporaries, the continued tag of emo plaguing them now seems almost redundant. Sure, they write the kind of lyrics more often found in marriage guidance literature than metal-tinged punk, but this is not so much about displaying bleeding hearts as inflicting multiple, gore-pumping shrapnel wounds. Following that formula, it's closer 'If I Could' that really shows Pukkelpop what it's been missing. Granite tough, it's simultaneously dangerously loud, endearingly sensitive, punk and populist. Hundred Reasons in a nutshell, basically. On this kind of form, Belgium won't remain ignorant much longer. Job done.
Jim Alexander
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