You need a specific mix of things to get a really good concert. Amazing bands, obviously, but also an excited crowd and a good space. The only part of that mix you can’t control is the crowd. The Glass House is one of my favorite venues, and the line-up for this show was amazing, but a lackluster crowd could have ruined the whole thing. Luckily, this crowd had more energy than any I’ve ever been in, and it stayed high all night.
Farewell To Freeway got things started with a solid four-song set. Their sound is screamy, a lot like A Static Lullaby, but their show was much tighter than ASL the night before. The band worked well together on stage and seemed honestly excited to be there. Farewell To Freeway is playful on stage which makes for a nice dynamic considering how hardcore their music is. There’s a lot of chatter with the audience and 80s-metal style swinging of hair that makes for the general feeling that these guys don’t take themselves too seriously. The set was tight, but very short.
Farewell to Freeway was followed by Schoolyard Heroes, a four-piece band out of Seattle that takes a little bit of getting used to on stage. Their dynamic on stage takes a bit of getting used to. The star of the show is lead singer Ryann Donnelly, but her style is so theatrical that she doesn’t really connect with the audience. The band is led on stage by bassist Jonah Bergman, who does all the talking (literally, Ryann doesn’t open her mouth except to sing), and though it works once you figure it out, it’s a bit odd at first.
Schoolyard Heroes is an amazing act. I wasn’t familiar with the band before the show and I was blown away by the set. Ryann is an amazing singer, but the true musical star is guitarist Steve Bonnell, rocking a crystal-clear guitar and ginormous hair. I tend to think of guitars as background for the vocalist, especially when the vocalist is as strong as Ryann, but this guy had several solos that were jaw-dropping complex and wonderfully executed. Schoolyard Heroes’ sound has an eerie, goth tinge to it along the lines of The Birthday Massacre. The music works well with Ryann’s theatrics and, once you get used to the fact that she doesn’t speak, makes for an amazing show.
My American Heart was next and the first band of the night to have a substantial fan base in the crowd. I was on the floor toward the front, and the press got really intense for this set. My American Heart is a relatively local band (out of San Diego) that plays melodic pop-punk, emphasis on pop. Their set was solid and very high-energy despite the fact that their music is neither as hardcore as Farewell To Freeway nor as lightening fast as Schoolyard Heroes. They were the first band able to command a sing-along chorus from the crowd (on “The Shake”). The set lacked the theatrics of the rest of bands on the tour, but none of the intensity. They closed with a raucous version of “Boys, Grab Your Guns.”
My American Heart was followed by Madina Lake, and damn, but this band gets better every time I see them. I saw them play for the first time on Projekt Revolution last summer, but they are really in their element on this tour. Madina Lake has more energy on stage than any group I’ve ever seen. Lead singer Nathan Leone runs for the whole set and is wonderfully engaged with the audience. The band dropped confetti about two songs in and that set the tone for the rest show. A couple songs later they released giant five or six foot balloons to bounce over the crowd. This was a celebration.
The crowd became an assembly of berserkers from the moment Madina Lake took the stage, but the first time (yes, first, wait for it) that Nathan walked the barrier to let the crowd maul him I started to worry about cracking a rib on the barricade (don’t laugh, it’s happened before – at a MCR concert, no less). The crowd was word-perfect on every one of the band’s songs, and sang for the whole set. Madina Lake’s music is particularly suited to riling up an audience, the messages of numbers like “Now or Never” will get you moving even if you’ve never heard the song before, so I expected the energy to stay high. Then, just before the last number, Nathan dove out onto the crowd, which took a lot of guts. We were packed in too tight to drop him, but there was a serious risk that the pit in the back would decide to keep him. He made it back, though, and the band closed with “Pandora.”
Having seen Madina Lake live before, I was thinking going into the show that they were going to have the best set of the evening, and after their set I was convinced of it. I was absolutely wrong. Aiden did the impossible and stole the show back (since they were headlining I guess it was Aiden’s to begin with, but it’s been a month of headliners being upstaged by openers).
Aiden opened with a solo version of “The Opening Departure” by lead singer Wil Francis, and if I thought my ribs were in danger before, I’d had no idea how dense the crowd was willing to get. The set was balanced bweteen songs of the new album, Conviction, and songs off their earlier recordings. Conviction’s sound is incredibly different from their early work, so it took some doing to keep the show cohesive, but they managed it by playing less pretty versions of Conviction’s songs. The show versions weren’t so different as to be unrecognizable, but the rougher versions allowed the band to slide earlier songs into the mix without sounding like they were channeling two different bands.
I’ve been in a lot of audiences of die-hard fans (I often am a die-hard fan, at least for the duration of the show), but I’ve never seen an audience more willing to be controlled by a lead than this one. I’ve seen Green Day, Linkin Park, and especially My Chemical Romance command some crazy stuff from their fans, but Aiden will be the new bar that I measure this against. As with Madina Lake, the crowd was note-perfect on every song and more than willing to scream or sing or clap on command, and often without the command. The band was completely engaged with the audience through the entire show, responding to calls, playing with a beach ball that someone launched, and leaning down to greet the crowd-surfers that came fast and furious after a few songs.
At the end of the set, it was more than clear that we were going to play the encore game. Considering that Aiden had played a generous set (they were on stage for about an hour) I was expecting a single song. Instead, we got three. It started with Wil playing a solo, acoustic version of “Silent Eyes” off the Rain in Hell EP. But the most memorable number, of the encore and the entire show, was when Wil got the audience (the whole audience, even the people in the risers and balcony) to crouch down below the level of the barricade and stay there for the first verse of “One Love.” The roar when the crowd came to their feet from the chorus overwhelmed The Glass House’s very impressive sound system and wrenched the energy back up for the closing number, “World By Storm.”
I will be back at The Glass House tonight for Emery and Mayday Parade, and the boys better step it up. They’ve got a hell of an act to follow.
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