Kerrang! Tour 2016 – Day Seven – Manchester

We’re joining this year’s line-up on the road to get all the backstage gossip from the four bands on the bill, so check back to Kerrang.com each day for a new blog from every date of the tour, and keep up-to-date with all the action on our Instagram account (@kerrangmagazine_). Don’t forget to send us your own pictures and stories using #KerrangTour2016!

Kerrang! Tour 2016 – Day Seven – Manchester

The day begins the way all days ideally should: with cupcakes. Sum 41 and Kerrang! Tour cupcakes, to be precise. They make ROAM especially happy.

Bellies full, Sum 41 crack on with soundcheck in the venue, before scooting off to hang out with some lucky competition winners for a meet and greet.

Before long, we corner Cone and Brownsound in their, um, dressing room toilet, to have a chat about how the tour has been for them, and what their plans are after this (hint: a new album and even more touring – BOOM!).

Being cooped up in a loo isn’t that much fun, so Biters dude Tuk invites us outside to check out his band’s ride. The frontman makes friends with strangers on the bus and street, and shows us a bottle of piss that’s accumulated from all those long drives. Lovely.

Upstairs, ROAM and Frank Carter warm up for the evening’s sets, as Biters take to the stage at the Albert Hall and invite more gig-goers up on stage to chug beer while they shred. Never a dull moment.

ROAM are up next, they play another blinder. The higher stage gives frontman Alex all the space in the world to bounce around, as Warning Sign and Deadweight sound even more colossal than usual. Awesome stuff.

“We are Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, and we’re your new favourite band,” grins Frank Carter (no arguments from us here) as The Rattlesnakes hit the stage tonight, before inventing an interesting twist on the wall of death: the wall of slide-on-knees. There’s all the usual carnage we’ve come to expect from Frank tonight, plus one or two missing shoes, and the crowd take things to a whole new level. Truly incredible.

It’s Sum 41 time! Having clearly witnessed the set before them, Deryck Whibley observes, “We’ve got some crazy motherfuckers in here tonight, god dammit!” as Manchester well and truly smashes the record for most crowd-surfers all tour. The sing-alongs are huge – Summer, Motivation and Fat Lip, in particular – and we start to feel pretty bummed that there’s only one more night of this left. Boo.

Once the fans pile out after meeting the bands at merch, we head next door for the first proper aftershow party of the tour. Biters and ROAM have a dance-of…

(Biters are clearly the winners.)

And the rest… well, it’s a little hazy.

London – it’s on you now. Let’s make this final night of the Kerrang! Tour 2016 count!