Crowd surfers & stage dives: VANT cause chaos at The Great Escape

Even before VANT hit the stage, the air in Brighton’s Patterns is fizzing with anticipation. Excitable boys litter the front row, giddy at the prospect of winning themselves a stage dive or two and unsurprisingly - considering the ferocious live reputation that the band have earned already - their wishes take little time in coming true.

Focused and unsettling, Mattie Vant’s already a fully-formed frontman, with his intense stare and potent vocals. Their songs, while heavily political, are lean enough to still pack an almighty punch, and the crowd are firmly in the palm of their hands just moments in. It’s all head banging and gang vocal choruses, everyone throwing themselves towards the stage in tandem.

Opener ‘The Answer’ blows apart the room, while ‘Parking Lot’ is greeted as a full blown rock anthem. Just three tracks in and Mattie takes a quick venture offstage and into the centre of the crowd, inciting even more madness in the process. From that point on it’s all crowd surfers and stage invasions, proving that not only do VANT really have something to their say with their music, but The Great Escape want to get involved too.