Monday, April 8, 2013

Take It or Leave It Tour: Sleeping With Sirens, Conditions, Dangerkids, Lions Lions



     Sleeping With Sirens’ “Take It Or Leave It Tour” recently made its way through Pensacola, Fla. bringing the party to American Legion Post 33. Supporting acts for the boys in SWS included Conditions, Dangerkids, and Lions Lions.
     First up was the Boston-based pop-punk quintet, Lions Lions. Any preconceived notions I had about this show being nothing short of an upright mall-core emo fest were thrown out the door upon the first 20 seconds of these guys taking the stage. Front man/vocalist Josh Herzer took great advantage of the fact that he didn’t have a guitar weighing him down. From holding the mic out to dedicated fans in the front row allowing them to show off their reverence to the band, to climbing to the top of the tower of speakers on stage, the guy clearly knows how to keep the crowd interested. Herzer wasn’t the only driving force behind Lions Lions though. Drummer, Brian Cauti, never missed a beat and the full bearded bassist, Jon Kay, perfectly filled out the band’s sound with his vocal harmonies. The band currently has two albums and one EP which can all be purchased on iTunes and has another album in the works.
     The second band to take the stage was no exception to the high level of energy brought forth by Lions Lions. Dangerkids are a five-piece hip-hop/metal core act based out of Dayton, OH. Think Linkin Park, but cooler, and replace the turntables with synth. Fronted by two vocalists, there is hardly a dull moment on the stage as Andy Bane (singer/screamer) and Tyler Smyth (rapper) seamlessly hand off vocal duties from one to the other. Aside from the fact that there is arguably nobody else in the music scene doing what this group is doing, they are also driven by a female drummer, Katie Cole, something else you don’t see much of in any genre of music. Considering the fact that Dangerkids just recently formed in the earlier part of 2012 and already landed a deal with Rise records, it’s safe to say that these guys, and gal, have only just begun. Keep an eye out for their self-titled debut album, set to be released this summer.
     Conditions, a quartet based out of Richmond, VA., played third and served as a perfect bridge between the opening and closing acts of the night. With their combination of melodically intricate guitar riffs, at times jazzy bass lines and frontman Brandon Roundtree’s sometimes soothing, sometimes angry vocals, the crowd had something to pay attention to at all times. While the tour was in support of their newest album, Full of War, set to be released March 26 on record label Good Fight Music, the guys made sure to play a variety of songs, both old and new.
     After the first three bands warmed up the crowd for the final performance of the night, Sleeping With Sirens finally ran out on stage greeted by a deafening wave of girls’ high pitch squeals and shrieks of excitement and quite obviously, a large dose of desire for lead singer, Kellin Quinn. They opened up the set with a live debut of the unreleased and heavy-hitting, “These Things I’ve Done.” Keeping the level of intensity high, they took it back to 2010 with the title track from, With Ears To See And Eyes To Hear.
     Two songs off of 2011’s Let’s Cheers To This later and all of the band left the stage except for Quinn and guitarist Jesse Lawson. “Where’d everybody go?” Quinn asked. Lawson responded with “They all had to go home.” Of course, the crowd was privy to what was going on and was soon rewarded with acoustic versions of “Scene One: James Dean & Audrey Hepburn” and “Scene Two: Roger Rabbit” from the 2012 EP, If You Were a Movie, This Would Be Your Soundtrack and With Ears To See and Eyes To Hear’s “Don’t Fall Asleep at the Helm.” After 15 minutes or so of Kellin wooing the crowd, the rest of the band returned to the stage welcomed warmly by the crowd and went straight into “Tally It Up, Settle The Score” followed by “The Bomb Dot Com V2.0” and “If I’m James Dean, You’re Audrey Hepburn.” The lights dimmed, and the boys in the band exited stage right. There was no way that the hundreds of teenage girls and their jealous boyfriends were going to let them get off the hook that easy though. Beckoned back out to stage by a variety of screams, squeals, “one more song”, and encore chants, SWS came back out and finished the night with “Do It Now, Remember It Later” and “If You Can’t Hang” from Let’s Cheers To This.
     Check out www.ryanscott-photo.com for pics from the entire concert as well as video interviews with Josh Herzer from Lions Lions and Katie Cole and Andy Bane from Dangerkids.

https://www.facebook.com/LionsLionsMA?ref=ts&fref=ts
https://www.facebook.com/wearedangerkids?ref=ts&fref=ts
https://www.facebook.com/sleepingwithsirensband?fref=ts
    
    

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