PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Tonight at the forum was the last night of the UK leg of UFO’s tour. The British rock legends have Greek band 4Bitten supporting them on the whole of the European tour. While I’ve seen UFO several times before and always enjoyed them, 4Bitten were a new band for me, so I was curious to see what they were like.
By the time 4bitten came on stage there were several hundred fans in the venue, with most down at the front to see what they were like. The crowd increased in size steadily and by the end of the set there were probably around a thousand people in the audience. The crowd seem impressed by 4bitten – and not surprisingly – there are some seriously heavy riffs, and singer Fofi Roussos has a great voice. They certainly impressed me – after their set I headed to the merch stand and bought both their albums. A great start to the night, and I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for future 4bitten tour dates.
UFO kicked off their set with ‘Lights out’ which should have got things off to a great start, but technical problems meant that they cut the song short, waited for the crew to fix the problem then started from the beginning. They soon got back into their stride though, and looked every bit the experienced professionals they are.
A major disappointment for me was the setlist – it’s almost identical to the one they played on their last visit to London, a year ago. If they hadn’t had technical problems the setlist called for them to play ‘Mojo town’ but this was cut due to repeating ‘Lights out’. Other than that there was just one song different between the two years setlists (‘Cherry’ replaced ‘I’m a loser’). When you’ve got as big a catalogue of songs as UFO have, there’s no excuse for this. Yes there are certain songs that fans expect to hear, but when bands just play the same songs every year then there’s little incentive for fans to come and see the band again – variety in the setlist makes it a lot more interesting for fans.
This means that if you’ve seen UFO before then you know pretty much exactly how the gig went – it’s so predictable. Ending with ‘Too hot to handle’ and ‘Rock bottom’, the inevitable encore was ‘Shoot shoot’ and ‘Doctor Doctor’.
UFO are always great, but unless they start to put more variation into the setlist then unfortunately I don’t think I’d bother going to see them next time they tour. With a less predictable setlist then maybe they’d have sold out the Forum rather than it being half full.
UFO setlist:
Lights Out
Mother Mary
Fight Night
Wonderland
Cherry
Let It Roll
Burn Your House Down
Only You Can Rock Me
Love to Love
Hell Driver
Venus
Too Hot to Handle
Rock Bottom
Encore:
Doctor Doctor
Shoot Shoot
