Live Review: Three Days Grace - Manchester Academy 16/09/22

Embarking on their first UK tour for four years and fresh on the heels of their seventh studio album ‘Explosions’ released in May, Canadian rockers Three Days Grace were at Manchester Academy late last week.

Described as being a plethora of genres, from post-grunge, alternative through to hard rock and nu-metal, the band have been noticeably on the music scene since the release of their debut album in 2003, having formed in 1997. Consisting of original members Brad Walst (bass) and Neil Sanderson (drums) with Barry Stock joining on lead guitar in 2003, the lead singer is now Matt Walst (Brad’s brother) who joined the band in 2013 following the departure of original lead vocalist Adam Gontier.

With the repetitive notes of Jump Around streaming through the PA to get the crowd suitably hyped, the band enter stage and launch straight into new track ‘So Called Life’ from the recently released album ‘Explosions’. Despite it being a relatively new track, the song is well received by the crowd. Singer Matt encourages a mosh pit in the crowd pitting it against the size of the pit at the recent London gig and they launch into ‘Animal I Have Become’, followed up by a mix of tracks across their back catalogues, including tracks ‘Home’ and ‘Pain’ with every pause between songs accompanied by the crowd chanting ‘Three Days Grace’.

Midway through the set, the songs move to acoustic versions and during ‘Just Like You’ the band are joined by two crowd members Max and Joe who join along singing the song whilst Matt stands on the barrier. Ending the set on the ever popular and biggest streamed hit to date ‘I Hate Everything About You’, the crowd is split into two with one half singing ‘I’ and the other half ‘Hate’ then everyone joining in together.

As the crowd chant ‘Three Days Grace’, they return to the stage for an encore of ‘Never Too Late’, a song about never giving up and it never being too late to reach out to people to tell them it’s never too late and the venue is lit up by phone torches. The final song of the night is the raucous ‘Riot’ a perfect closing song that finishes the night with a bang!