Wow, what a great performance. Tahoe and I headed up the hill to catch the Napalm & Noise Tour featuring co-headliners The Devil Wears Prada and All That Remains with support from Story of the Year and Haste The Day. Unfortunately Haste The Day wasn’t in
We got really lucky that TDWP wasn’t headlining this night of the tour, so they played 2nd and saved us from sitting through All That Remains, who are terrible. Openers Story of the Year was pretty bad too, but I’ll get to that later. We were sittin
g upstairs in the balcony after SOTY expecting All That Remains to come up next, but when the band started I instantly recognized the song as Sassafras by TDWP and it was on!
TDWP featured a 6-piece band, the usuals plus a keyboard/synth player who thought he was the dude from underOATH, but that’s okay. As I said before the set started off with Sassafras and continued to feature a lot of songs off of the latest release With Roots And Branches including I Hate Buffering, Assistant to the Reginal Manager, Dez Moines, Big Wiggly Style, Danger:Wildman (closer), and Wapakalypse. The older songs they played were HTML Roolz Dood, Reptar, Hey John, and Dogs Can Grow Beards (I think). I was a longer set, close to an hour, since there were only 3 bands.
The band was so tight all night, very passionate about their music, and they played with crazy energy. I don’t think the altitude really affected them much besides front man Mike Hranica announcing that his spit was stringier and harder. Mike is a pretty unique front man in that he has two different “screams/growls” where most front man only have the one. His low growl is awesome sounding, especially in contrast to the clean vocals that the guitarist was singing. The band writes such good songs, very technical and intricate, which usually goes from organized chaos to synchronized booming riffs. The crowd was definitely there to see these guys more than anyone else; it was obvious after the place thinne
d out before All That Remains.
TDWP is a subtle Christian metalcore band, and I wasn’t sure if they would address the issue, but they did. After playing Dez Moines, which was amazing, Mike stated that they “believe in Jesus Christ, we’re not trying to be rude or anything…but that’s just the way it is” which lead right into their closing song Danger:Wildman. The crowds cheered very loudly at the name of Jesus Christ so I’m assuming that everyone who cheered, left before All That Remains.
The opening band Story of the Year is slowly falling from their once high perch that included multiple videos and songs on MTV off of their hit album
The first thing you noticed when they took the stage was that the crowd did not move at all, no pits, no jumping, just watching. With no crowd support the band apparently decided not to take their music very seriously and played games on stage the rest of the night that included push-ups/sit-ups, throwing drumsticks to each other during songs, and other antics that were distracting. The music is very simple and predictable, and you could see that the musicians in the band were bored with the songs. The only person really remaining serious was the lead singer, and I think it has to do with his messages of open-mindness (pro-homosexuality / anti-religion) and that just doesn’t crossover to the crowd that well. The song selection was interesting, deciding to omit hits like Anthem Of Our Dying Day for songs like Is This My Fate that are weak songs with strong messages. They played Is This My Fate as the closer and it was a poor choice.
People in the crowd were yelling out things like “sellout” and other things that apparently upset the front man, who then went on a little tirade about “having enough rep” to continue and whatnot. It was pretty lame in my opinion. But there were kids there for the band, and I confess that I was singing along as well since I have all 3 of their albums. The music is good, it’s just nothing special, and their live show is not worth recommending.
The last band, All That Remains, we stuck around for one song and then left. Right after the first song the singer was saying something about some equipment that broke and that there might be a few minutes of delay while they fixed it, and then replying to some fan he announced over the mix "i will $%&@ you in the face!". this is just one more reason why All That Remains sucks.
Here are the video’s I took:
The Devil Wears Prada - Dez Moines
3 comments:
Good to hear you had a good time. The synth players got nothing on Chris from UO. Chris has so much passion and i feel like the dude in TDWP is just trying to entertain. Just my thoughts....
Also, I saw TDWP at warped tour and they were amazing there. I wish i could see them in a more intimate setting. I hope to see them @ Rocketown in Nashville but i doubt it'll happen.
Looks fantastic
Looks fantastic
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