The Guns

By Megan Walker

Sheffield University’s Foundry was taken by storm on 11th December 2010 by Welsh quartet “The Guns”.

The band are unsigned and have turned down many record deals, stating that they wish to stay independent; which may explain why The Guns aren’t very well-known, despite having two EP’s and one album. The band were opening for the popular Welsh post-hardcore band The Blackout and kicked off the evening extremely well.

From the moment they walked on stage, they made an impact on every audience member. Despite the venue being only half full at this time, the band did everything they could to keep the energy and temperature high in the venue.

Powering into their set with “Colder” the crowd co-operated brilliantly – especially the front few rows clapping along, further back in the crowd mosh pits took over a lot of the dance floor and everyone was having a blast.

A particular moment the audience’s appreciation for the band was shown was when the band played their hit “Treacle and Pies” and frontman Alex Wiltshire had everyone in the venue chanting “That ass and those eyes, they go together like treacle and pie”, diverting between the boys and the girls of the crowd. The audience gladly obliged to chant louder and create more energy in the venue, making the gig seem more personal and friendly to both the audience and the band themselves.

The band played a lot of songs from their home-made album including “It’s on like Donkey Kong”, “Eff right off” and “Answers” and the band’s frontman was a fantastic crowd pleaser and showed the audience he had a great amount of energy and kept the set, and crowd, going through out the band’s slot.

The only downside towards Alex’s approach was the amount of foul language he used to interact to the audience, although laughed at by most of the older members of the crowd, it could have being taken offensively to others.

Throughout the set it became clear that drummer Rhian Williams was very talented on the drums and that she had a lot of unique talent, showing that girls can do as well as boys when it comes to being in bands. With many songs in their set the beautiful Rhian had many drum solos and these really got the audience moving to the rhythm of them and dancing around.

Overall, The Guns played a set which will be remembered for both the audience and themselves. Sheffield embraced the Welsh rockers with open arms and as the bands twitter described they enjoyed being in Steelcity too; tweeting after the gig “Thank you so much for keeping it real with us tonight Sheffield”.

The Guns are definitely worth checking out!