The All-American Rejects rocked their pants off at MTV World Stage

It wasn't that apparent before the sun set on a warm Saturday, but when the night came, it was obvious we were the closest you can get to a Dantean pit (in this lifetime at least), with the spectacle of Sunway Pyramid looming forebodingly overhead. Hell, there were even stone beasts on the descent. At the very  base of Sunway Lagoon the fun was of the good and clean, alcohol-free, kids and pop tarts variety, but it was so much fun it was almost sinful.

See, the whole point of MTV World Stage "Live In Malaysia" was that you could, every now and again, pull the stick outta your genre-preoccupied ass and just immerse yourself in pure saccharine sweetness. Getting lairy here would've been pointless (that was what the after-party was for). And the 10,000 or so kids who filled up the emptied-out wave pool didn't need to. They had in the place of booze a massive dose of MTV doing what MTV does best–being like the cool big brother who throws parties so XXL that your mind sputters and whimpers when you try and fathom the bloody scale of the thing.

VJs Taya, Utt and Denise brought on local boys Estranged to rapturous applause, mostly because they were there to represent. And they did so with some gusto: stirring up fist-pumping nationalistic pride between songs. Estranged went for volume, and the kids went crazy; shame they left out albatross 'Itu Kamu'–even their brothers in radio-friendly rock Hoobastank didn't shy away from throwing in 'The Reason' (more on that later). Still, Estranged more than held their own and set the tone for the rest of the show. 

Next up was Boys Like Girls. As you'd expect, they drove the girls wild with their poppier than pop punk jangle. What you wouldn't have expected was how well Martin Johnson worked the crowd, and how they managed to immacutlately replicate their new sound (listen closely, and you'll see hard rock nestling there somewhere) on Love Drunk in a live show.

They were followed by spankin' new British band Raygun; so new they only have one single out. The impossibly-named frontman Ray Gun pranced onstage like a Shakespearean extra, and followed up their hit single 'Just Because' with a number of Britpop-lite tunes. It was still more songs than the irresistibly sexy Pixie Lott could come up with/was allowed though; looking a lot like Duffy, Pixie had a lot of clothes on (do it for the kids) but not a lot of songs. She raced through a three-song set, and bam! She was gone. But any Pixie is better than nothing.

Lazarus act Hoobastank was on next. Fair play to them though, they didn't shrivel from playing the crowd pleasers–throwing in the now-ancient 'Crawling In The Dark', the theme from Ghostbusters and, of course, 'The Reason'. Which even the hardest of us must admit to singing along in secret, being the guiltiest of cheesy pleasures and all. One of the best moments of the night, just because they played it. That's almost like Radiohead playing 'Creep'. Not really. But you get the idea.

And then the big guns came on. Tyson Ritter of The All-American Rejects, in a neon green wife-beater, oozed the same kind of serpentine sexuality that hasn't been seen since Steven Tyler grew old; and like Hoobastank, they worked in their biggest hits in their extra-long set. Even their breakout single 'Swing, Swing'. So effective were the Rejects that even the older ones in the crowd (most of them were in the stands above) who were too shy to dance before got their ass-shake on.  

Kasabian were altogether more stiff upper-lipped. In a good way, of course; you don't expect a band whose every sound is like the soundtrack of a revolution manifesto to get all slithery (especially since Tom Meighan rocked a lovely Inglourious Basterds do). They threw in some songs from their debut Kasabian and Empire, but it was the songs from West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum that stood out–arguably their best album–especially the sinister 'Vlad The Impaler'.

Expectations were sky high before the show. Take a look at the page where we were giving away free tics, for example (people were stopping short of putting their parents on the market). But this was an MTV event. And nobody knows how to party better.

Click HERE for the full gallery, and check out these videos as well:

Kasabian (from Gold Baby Love)

All-American Rejects (from lunastartunes)

Hoobastank (from rollerbuzz11)

WORDS JASON PHOTOS MTV ASIA
www.mtvasia.com/worldstage