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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