Cursed / the Process / Abandon Ship

It's my first day in London and I'm jet-lagged as fuck, so what do I decide to do? Hop on the tube and go up to see Cursed in Camden at The Underworld. I get there at about 6:30, but doors aren't opening until 8 PM and it's cold as shit. I go next door to the pub for a little bit to kill some time. I talked to two British girls outside of the venue, and watched one puke behind a telephone booth. Finally the doors open and I go inside (by the way, our exchange rate sucks there, the admission to the show wound up being like 16 dollars American).

First band to come on was Abandon Ship, who I'm pretty sure were from England. I was really impressed and intend to look in to them in the future. They played straight up old school-styled hardcore with nice breakdowns.

Next band to come on stage was the Process; they were from Scotland I think, and they sounded like your average tough-guy chugga chugga hardcore band, except the vocals reminded me much more of Jake Bannon than any tough-guy hardcore band's vocals.

Finally Cursed took the stage, and I gotta say they were fucking amazing, opening it up with "The Void," which was my favorite song off of the new CD. They went through tons of my favorites in their set, the highlights being "Opposable Thumb" (best Cursed song ever), "1974," "Polygraph," "Fatalist," "Model Home Invasion," "Hell Comes Home," and they played "Bloody Mary" for an encore. I'd rate Cursed's live performance as being just as good as Dillinger Escape Plan, even though they don't have all the flashy lights. The crowd I was a tad disappointed in, as nobody really moshed or danced until the last couple songs because they all had beers in their hands, and I wasn't going to start anything and cause someone to spill their beer and get my ass kicked, so instead I was up front singing along to just about every song.