GIG REVIEW: Chaser + All Out Attack + Feral North @ Trillians, Newcastle, Tuesday 1 July 2025
Chaser are more than 5,000 miles from home on a sticky Tuesday night, and they’re playing their hearts out in front of no more than 50 people.
This is life for the four-piece from Orange County, California, who are busy converting more fans to their cause; that cause being fast, loud, punk rock like that made in the ’90s by bands on the Epitaph and Fat Wreck labels.
Yes, Chaser might be a bit derivative, but there’s so much energy and tight musicianship in their songs that you don’t mind if they sound like Bad Religion or Pennywise.
They’re here as part of a tour promoting their most recent album, Small Victories, released in June 2024. It’s their sixth since they formed in OC back in 2000, and it’s packed full of melodic skatepunk.
They’ve played in Newcastle before, at the Head of Steam back in 2019, and had a few line-up changes over the years, but vocalist Mike LeDonne is a constant, and he’s a bundle of energy.
Even if you don’t know the songs – and only a handful of people seem to – that enthusiasm makes them hard to dislike, and there’s a real positive vibe in the room.
The majority of tonight’s setlist comes from the latest album – nine of the 13 tracks, in fact. Like myself, most of the audience seem to be seeing Chaser for the first time, as only a handful are singing along, though everyone seems to be enjoying it going by the warm applause between songs.
Galloping guitar riffs, furious blast beats on the drums and locked-in bass drive the band on, from the opening one-two of album openers Brand New Enemy and The Breaks into a couple of older songs, then back into Small Victories tracks.
There are three songs from 2021’s Dreamers and one from the previous album, 2018’s Sound The Sirens, but nothing at all from the first three records.
Their 50-minute set ends with A Revel Song and Fault Lines, two of the strongest songs from Small Victories. and then it’s over to the merch desk to sell CDs and T-shirts to the newly-converted.
No review is complete without a mention of the warm-up acts who paved the way for our headliners. Feral North, first up, were new to me; they’re a local four-piece who play a catchy brand of pop-punk with a big dollop of ska thrown in, and I enjoyed their 10-song set very much.
They remind me a lot of ’00s ska-punks Spunge, without the brass section, and a bit of Googling when I get home reveals they’ve streamed a few songs on YouTube. One of them is Keep Up the Fight, a catchy little number encouraging people to support the DIY music scene. Hear, hear!
Second on the three-band bill were All Out Attack, another local quartet, and one I’m much more familiar with. They released their second album Gaslight Nation (reviewed here) late last year, and it’s a belter.
They’re a band who impress every time I see them, and bassist James is certainly putting in a shift tonight – he played guitar for Feral North too.
Their 10-song set is full of politically-charged bangers, from A Holiday In Beijing to Moorland Martyr (dedicated to any hunt sabs in the house) and Step Up to debut single Class War, which they close with.
It’s a shame there aren’t more people here for this gig, organised by local promoters North East Cosmonaut Circus, but there’s one at The Black Bull across the river in Gateshead too – an unfortunate clash for a Tuesday night.
Work together guys, there’s room for everyone to enjoy a slice of the action if venues and promoters are a bit more savvy about it.
