Death metal and mosh pits – what a great way to spend a Thursday night! The Taste of Chaos tour made a stop here in Tucson at the Rialto Theatre featuring the Cancer Bats, Bring Me the Horizon, Four Year Strong, Pierce the Veil, and the headliner, Thursday.
The first band to take the stage was The Cancer Bats. This Toronto-based quartet opened the night with crunching guitar chords and excessive screaming by frontman Liam Cormier. They played their final song, “”Hail Destroyer,”” and made way for the next band: Four Year Strong. The act from Worcester, Mass., brought the sound down from death metal to pop/emo punk. Most of Four Year Strong’s singing was done by guitarists Alan Day and Dan O’Connor, but occasionally synthesizer Josh Lyford would come out and start screaming a little bit. Four Year Strong sounds a lot like Rise Against back when they released Siren Song of the Counter Culture.
Following up Four Year Strong was the San Diego-based Pierce the Veil. The quartet also provided a little bit of relief from the heavy death metal of the Cancer Bats and even gave the crowd some humor when they played Michael Jackson’s “”Beat It.”” Thankfully they didn’t scream in their version because that would’ve definitely killed it, but overall they did a pretty good job. Pierce the Veil also did one very crazy stunt where the guitarists got up on top of the amps and then jumped off. As expected, the crowd went crazy. Pierce the Veil had some screaming in their music that reminded me of Atreyu and Circa Survive combined.
Up next was Sheffield, England’s own Bring Me the Horizon. This UK band, unlike The Beatles, sounded more like fellow UK hardcore punk rockers The Gallows. The only difference was that Bring me the Horizon was a lot more hardcore. They seem to have a huge fan base because the entire venue went crazy and I felt like the only one who hadn’t heard of these guys. Lead singer Oliver Sykes screamed into the microphone and got the crowd to do a massive circle pit. However, everyone was excited for the next and final band to perform: Thursday.
The lights dimmed and out came Thursday. The crowd went crazy and Thursday opened up with “”Resuscitation of a Dead Man”” off of their new album Common Existence. Now, seeing as how Common Existence was just released, not as many people were singing along as when Thursday played their next song, “”Understanding In A Car Crash”” off of their album Full Collapse. During “”Understanding In A Crash,”” the crowd was jumping and singing along with frontman Geoff Rickly. Thursday performed songs from all their albums including one song, “”Jet Black New Year,”” which wasn’t released on a major album. There are those bands that sound great on CD, but when they play live, they sound terrible. Thursday is not one of those bands.
