{"id":31060,"date":"2025-08-21T16:13:52","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T15:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musicinleicester.co.uk\/index.php\/?p=31060"},"modified":"2025-08-27T10:25:53","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:25:53","slug":"gig-review-publicity-at-the-big-difference-friday-11th-july-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicinleicester.co.uk\/index.php\/gig-review-publicity-at-the-big-difference-friday-11th-july-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Gig review – Publicity at The Big Difference, Friday 11th July 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"
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With Then It Exploded, Infernal Grace and Easy Eights<\/h2>\n

Reviewed by Thomas Needham<\/a><\/p>\n

Photographed by Thomas Needham<\/a><\/p>\n

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As of re-writing this article, it\u2019s been a month since this gig (my bad, been a busy boy) and a lot <\/i>has happened since. Anyway, guess who\u2019s back!<\/p>\n

Hint: it\u2019s not Ozzy Osbourne!<\/p>\n

Once these titans of yesteryear die, that\u2019s it. Curtains. Astute observations on the matters of mortality aside, the point I mean to raise is the increasingly pervasive idea that there is nobody to pass the baton to. YUNGBLUD seems like a lovely fella but he\u2019s hardly the type to cartel-style execute seventeen cats – marking the distinction between a rockstar and a rockstar<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Truthfully, there\u2019s neither the appetite nor the market for what is new. Culture is not being made (or at least popularised), instead it\u2019s repackaged, reproduced and regurgitated. Conglomerates spend their hard-earned wonga gobbling up the rights to all your favourite artists, from royalties to licensing to brand deals to streaming. Welcome to the world of stuck culture. Remember kids, nobody dared wear a dress before Harry Styles. Maybe he\u2019ll make a song about religion next! Very bold.<\/p>\n

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Those at the top don\u2019t know what people want and those at the bottom don\u2019t either. Remember the five-year run of sausage roll-related Christmas number ones? You can thank our Nottingham \u2018betters\u2019 for that. There are more musicians today than ever. Not that you\u2019d know it. Never has the music industry been so big, yet so small. A great cultural ouroboros where in 2023 streaming services hosted 184 million songs. By the end of 2024 that number had rocketed to over 202 million. 95% of artists have fewer than 1000 monthly listeners. Rocking in the free world indeed.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need a new Oasis, we need a band that kills<\/i> Oasis. This is inconceivable to do solely online, the internet has failed to be ‘the great leveller’, the barriers between consumer, creative and corporation have simply shifted. With entire tastes and trends and now even \u2018music\u2019 itself curated by machine learning algorithms, music is spoon-fed rather than sought out, discarded rather than doted on.<\/p>\n

In this era of the hologram concert, the TikTok snippet, the deepfake and AI trough-slop, it\u2019s never been more important to support your local music scene. Most venues and artists don\u2019t have a pot to piss in, let alone a window to throw it out of. You may well not like or care for what comes out of Leicester musically but at the very least engage with that is real, tangible and in desperate need of at the very least your attention. Don\u2019t like it? Change it.<\/p>\n

The lifeblood of Leicester has always been the passionate people who are a part of it, so get your skin in the game – that\u2019s the big difference. Speaking of- Big Difference Debuts! While it\u2019s hardly a novel concept to give a platform to new artists, it\u2019s absolutely integral. Heading into the venue, I was elated over how utterly packed it was, ducking and diving directly to the bar to down all their nukie browns. My transformation into Kevin continues at a pace.<\/p>\n

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This night in particular saw Then It Exploded\u2026<\/b><\/a> take to the stage first. Striking me as an inexplicable mix of Blue Oyster Club and Weezer, their original material encompasses rambunkshush, warblingly distorted, dad-rock guitars with a stilted panache that\u2019s more\u00a0intriguing than it is seemingly contradictory.<\/p>\n

Conor’s lead guitar work is greedily sweeping and ever-present; it\u2019s the dominating force behind this stylistic tug-of-war. Drummer Jean can certainly hold a driving drumbeat; he offers the foil to Conor\u2019s indiscriminate embellishments. The rhythms of each song involve the same derivative snare, kick-drum, hi-hat backbeat that gives the band their jilted edge, especially on songs like Always an Optimist<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a welcome dynamic that I hope they continue to explore, it\u2019s characterful and endearing in a way that allows you to enjoy the easy-listening. Jean has the consistency down and as the band continues to expand their repertoire as performers and songwriters, he\u2019ll be able to bring out more of his character, expanding upon the occasional time signature changes and fills already in their work.<\/p>\n

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Mike may not be the most traditionally bewitching of frontmen, but there\u2019s no need to be. There\u2019s a complete lack of ego to Then It Exploded… that makes the band a simple pleasure to enjoy. The fact that they relish performing makes life as an audience member an easy breeze. It was bassist Katie who was the real unsung hero of their set. Laying down the low end, her jaunty basslines added a solid accompaniment to Gillibrand\u2019s vocals. Then It Exploded\u2026 is a band to keep your eye on, although that might be a bit reductive, spoiler alert but you should keep a beady eye on every band in this article.<\/p>\n

Never before have I been so convinced that the children yearn for the metal. More than that, they yearn for Tiny Tim\u2019s 24-minute cover of Rebel Yell but people aren\u2019t ready for that conversation. The floor was packed, the basement sweltering, the audience joyfully belting along to War Pigs<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Ozzy Osbourne\u2019s death has marked a renaissance in interest and a warranted reappraisal of metal as a genre. Infernal Grace<\/b><\/a> gives the goods. Explicitly rejecting the sham of noughties nu-metal, they harken back to the olden goldies of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Guns ‘N’ Roses, perhaps to their detriment.<\/p>\n

Metal won\u2019t be reclaimed from the Fred Dursts of the world without bringing something new to the table. Time is of the essence. If they can cement themselves as songwriters beyond simply covers and lean into the newfound interest, they\u2019ll go far. Infernal Grace has the chops; now they need to bring the sauce.<\/p>\n

The band is obscenely tight, Philene on bass, Reon on drums, Isaac on rhythm guitar and Jack on lead did not put a foot wrong. Jack in particular is a first-rate lead guitarist with his extended solo in their cover of Iron Maiden\u2019s \u2018Seek and Destroy\u2019 being rather splendid indeed.<\/p>\n

For the first time in my oh so illustrious career as a writer for MiL, I had members of the audience approach me to give their two cents on the performance, specifically their scepticism about frontman Harry\u2019s vocals.<\/p>\n

For me, singing is a craft honed with practice and dedication; fundamentally, it can be improved. Yeah, he tried a hand at Rocket Queen <\/i>by Guns ‘N’ Roses and it didn\u2019t quite meet the mark – fuggedaboutit! I can count with exactly zero fingers, how many people I know who can pull off an Axl Rose song – hell, even Axl Rose can\u2019t pull off Axl Rose songs.<\/p>\n

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Good on Harry for pushing the limits and trying something new. More acts, especially in such early days, should take risks and potentially fail than play safe and stagnate. It\u2019s a learning process, refined with time and effort. My mind focuses instead on stage presence, especially for bands that harken back to the stellar excesses of glam metal. That\u2019s something that either comes to you naturally or it doesn\u2019t, and the audience can always<\/i> sniff you out. Fowler is a natural. Despite the packed stage, he remained an enigmatic frontman who carried Infernal Grace with all the necessary gumption and gusto. Jolly good show.<\/p>\n

To those sceptics, I say let\u2019s sit back and wait for original material – only then will we see what metal Infernal Grace is made of.<\/p>\n

Sharing my affinity for alliteration arrived Easy Eights<\/b><\/a>, let\u2019s see how overly obnoxious my writing will get now. The third band of the evening did the best kind of covers – they made the song their own.<\/p>\n

Now I have no clue who this ‘Post Malone’ is outside of his tangential connection to SkyDoesMinecraft and the insufferable bus rides home from school where the miscreants at the back of the bus would blast his song \u2018Rockstar\u2019. So imagine my surprise that a hard rock cover of said song would not only be listenable but actually enjoyable.<\/p>\n

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Comprised of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Isaac, guitarist Harry and for one night only George of Injury Detail<\/a>, who filled in for drummer Sam McClean *. They\u2019re a brash gaggle of rockers who didn\u2019t get the audience turnout they deserved. I was none the wiser that this was their very first gig until Isaac gave the game away, straight out the gate, their original material specifically Enigma<\/i> barrels over the audience with reckless disregard. With an incessant hi-hat jive and lyrics delivered in a deluge, using my 6 in music GCSE, I shall diagnose it as scary Mr Brightside. And that\u2019s not a problem – do not trust people who don\u2019t like Mr Brightside.<\/p>\n