Lineup: While She Sleeps/He is Legend/Savage Hands/Silent Season
Venue: ONCE Ballroom
Silent Season: Decent enough local opener that fit the bill nicely. Silent Season's clean vocal-driven style makes them easy to differentiate from most other metalcore bands and all of their songs were pretty catchy. Really the only downside to their music is that their vocalist's screams were nowhere near as strong as his Jesse Leach-esque cleans. Based on their solid live show and somewhat inspired take on a genre that is widely popular in this area, they should have no issue becoming a fixture on the Boston metal scene.
Savage Hands: Going out and leaving everything you have on a stage is a great way to endear yourself to an audience when you're an up-and-coming band. This is exactly what Savage Hands did here. They came on stage with a clear desire to let the crowd know who they are and what they're about, and didn't deviate from that mission for the whole 25 minutes they were on stage.
Delivering a vintage style of metalcore that is built around the buildups and payoffs of its breakdowns with non-stop energy and passion is a foolproof way to get a metal crowd to lose its shit. The pits popped at all of the moments they were designed to and that only made the group go even harder on stage-which was just beautiful to watch. While I'm not sure if there was enough I liked about the actual content of their music to explore them further on record, they're definitely a legit live act that instantly earned my respect.
He is Legend: He is Legend is a band that I've inexplicably ignored for ages. They've drawn comparisons to bands I thoroughly enjoy (Every Time I Die, Norma Jean) and came up during the mid-00's era that helped form my love for extreme music. Not even the recent recommendation from a close friend that I attended this show with was enough to get me to listen to them. In what can only be described as an inevitable conclusion to this long-running trivial saga, I became flooded with regret and self-disgust as soon as they started playing.
Driven by deep, scuzzy riffs, old school rock n'roll fury and a proudly goofy attitude, He is Legend is a kickass southern-tinged hard rock/post-hardcore/metalcore hybrid that appealed to me on a deep level. That glorious combination is especially satisfying in a live setting where hard-hitting guitar licks and furious energy hit their visceral peak. I'll be looking back on this occasion as yet another reason of why I need to do a better job of checking out artists that appeal to me on paper and/or are recommended to me by people who have knowledge of my tastes in a more timely fashion. Feeling like an idiot for consciously ignoring an artist when you dedicate so much time to exploring an artform royally sucks and is something I'm going to start working on right away.
While She Sleeps: It took four albums and nearly a decade of being a signed, internationally-known act for While She Sleeps to embark on a headlining tour through the United States and Canada. As easy as it would be to complain to that this was long overdue, particularly since they've grown a sizable following around Europe since 2015's Brainwashed, I was mostly just glad that they were finally getting a chance to live out part of their dream after grinding so hard for so long to get this opportunity. Unsurprisingly, While She Sleeps didn't let the people down that had been waiting so long for this historic run to happen.
What's really remarkable about While She Sleeps is how they've managed to become an even more assured, wrecking ball of a live act in the nearly five years since I saw them last. While having music that combines emotionally-charged lyrics that touch on a variety of political/social issues with big riffs, catchy hooks and well-timed breakdowns is an excellent blueprint for getting a strong audience response in metal/hardcore scene, it's their electric stage presence and superb understanding of what draws fans to their music that really makes them standout. They want people to really run wild at their shows and by creating setlists that focus on their most anthemic tunes ("ANTI-SOCIAL", "Four Walls", "Silence Speaks", "You Are We") along with doing everything in their power to ensure that the manic energy levels never let up, they are tremendously successful with that goal. Every call to sing along is met with a sea of voices, there was constant activity in the pits and when vocalist Lawrence Taylor decided to climb up to then jump off the railing of the adjoining second floor bar/lounge at ONCE Ballroom, people happily moved over to catch him and assist him with crowdsurfing back to the stage. This type of blissfully joyous, relentlessly energetic atmosphere is exactly what you want out of a show in this genre and that is why While She Sleeps are one of the most fun, electrifying live acts in metal right now.
Grades:
Silent Season: B-
Savage Hands: B
He is Legend: A-
While She Sleeps: A
Setlists:
He is Legend:
White Bat
Burn All Your Rock Records
The Seduction
Dixie Wolf (The Seduction Of...)
The Fight Song (Marilyn Manson cover)
Everyone I Know Has Fangs
Eye Teeth
Boogeywoman
While She Sleeps:
ANTI-SOCIAL
I'VE SEEN IT ALL
INSPIRE
Civil Isolation
Brainwashed
FAKERS PLAGUE
Death Toll
Four Walls
THE GUILTY PARTY
Hurricane
Silence Speaks
You Are We
No comments:
Post a Comment