The night starts out with the metal and southern rock of The Confession. They are polished, nasty and mean. His voice tinged with greedy sexual angst, Taylor Armstrong delivers ‘Burn The Virgin’ amidst major riffage and pounding freight train drums. Heavy on instrumental quality ‘No Angel’ ignites the spark and crowd surfing begins. They finish their set with the black hearted and fiery ‘Dance With The Devil.’
The post-hardcore band Escape The Fate began in the strip clubs of Las Vegas Nevada. Their emersion in the seamy side of life is reflected in their starkly manic performance and songs that are real, raw and raucous. Frontman Ronnie Radke is genuinely relentless, vicious and harsh. He lets out one insane, hair raising scream during ‘Dragging Dead Bodies In Blue Bags Up Really Long Hills’ that we’ll never forget.
Ronnie yells “Lock and load” and launches into the brilliant piece ‘The Guillotine.’ It’s no cookie cutter post-hardcore song and proves that originality in the genre isn’t dead. Ronnie stage dives onto the horde for the third time, spins his mic wildly then falls to his knees as the song ends. During 'Situations’ he asks “You guys want to have an orgasm with us?” The mob hollers and loudly moans “ah, ah, AH!” along with the band. Riveting, magnetic and intense ETF is absolutely astonishing.
The mob chants “Bullet” as they wait for the reigning echelon of metalcore Bullet For My Valentine. The band sings the first line from ‘All These Things I Hate (Revolve Around Me)’ and the crowd takes over loudly finishing the verse. Lead singer and master guitarist Matthew Tuck yells “Let’s see what you fuckers are made of!” The crowd roars and righteous shredding hits us like a wall of perfection as ‘Curses’ sends the mob reeling. Screaming fast, meticulous fingers blur over their guitar strings during ‘Cries In Vain.’ Then one long gut wrenching roar leads into ‘Her Voice Resides’ whilst the churning horde beats the horns in unison, anger spills over in the vocals and the circle pit detonates.
BFMV leads us to the river of supreme metal and we drink deep of ‘Spit You Out.’ The frantic horde bucks and pitches about while they yell, whistle and scream. Everyone raises their hands over their heads and claps as the fragile intro to ‘Tears Don’t Fall’ heralds the on slot of rumbling screamo thunder. This showcase song only makes us hungry for more. The band leaves the stage the way they entered it, with the devoted crowd chanting “Bullet.”
