Brand New, Thrice, & Crime In Stereo: Live at the House of Blues
Concert Review
By: Paul G. Atkinson IV
On November 4th fans of Brand New, Thrice, and Crime In Stereo flocked to the House of Blues in Orlando, Florida. The audience filled the building to the brim, scrounged up every last ticket, and witnessed a cavalcade of breathtaking lights and sounds before the night was through.
It had been four years since I had seen either Brand New or Thrice perform live. In that time each band has grown drastically. Thrice put out a wildly experimental four EP concept album series based on the four elements: Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth. However, rather than being a dense and unlistenable musical tome, the tunes that composed the series, The Alchemy Index, were some of the band’s most accessible and powerful songs to date. Thrice’s follow-up record, Beggars, is out now and showcases a more groove based and concise side of the band’s song writing.
In the meantime Brand New took a few years to craft an aggressive new chapter in their career, which culminated in their newest record Daisy. I was excited to see how the new material from both bands would translate into the live environment, but first Crime In Stereo got a chance to bring some melodic punk to the stage.
With their drums pounding away at break neck speeds Crime In Stereo used their guitar riffs to meld distorted punk seamlessly with melodic introspective interludes and bridges that complimented the sing/scream back and forth dynamic of their vocalist. The band’s stage presence was energetic, guitars were whipped about and the vocalist pogo’d up and down and flailed in time to chugging guitar chords. The singing was rough at times and their set was fairly short, but overall they brought some honest punk rock to the ears of the audience, which is hardly ever a bad thing.
Next up, Thrice emerged from the darkness of the dimmed houselights with a thumping bass line that queued the rest of the band to come crashing in with the opening track off of Beggars, “All The World Is Mad.” This was the first of many songs that were played off of the band’s new album, and while some fans kept their fingers crossed for “The Artist In The Ambulance” or “Deadbolt,” the tunes off of Beggars deserved a chance to become fully realized on the live stage.
The new groove based jams really flourished live. The softer moments were given ample delicacy and the crescendos were stretched to their limits, careening just near cacophony, but still holding steady, kept in balance as if each band members’ life depended on it. All the while the lights above the stage danced in time, soothing and moody during songs like “A Song For Milly Michaelson,” and then spastic and chaotic for the heavier songs like “The Arsonist” and “Silhouette.” The performance was captivating both musically and visually, and while I was anxious for Brand New to surface from back stage, at least one of my fellow music patrons had already declared Thrice the act of the night.
Time passed painfully slow as we waited and watched the take down and set up of gear. Eventually Brand New graced the venue’s stage and made waste of no time delving directly into “You Won’t Know.” Lead singer Jesse Lacey’s voice crooned the melodic verses and darted into scratchy yells on the chorus letting the song’s emotional content take his body over. The band made no effort disguising the audience’s desire to hear songs that are over half a decade old at this point and after playing “Degausser” they ran through the highlights of their sophomore album “Deja Entendu” leaving screaming fans with scratchy throats as the audience chanted along to every lyric.
After a few more songs the lights turned low and the band deserted Lacey. Alone with his guitar he played a stripped down version of “Limousine,” which was soaked in honesty. The rest of the band snuck back in for the song’s outro, developing a wall of sound that dissolved into feedback, and before anyone could grasp the gravity of the closing lyrics, “do me a favor baby, don’t reply/’cause I can dish it out, but I can’t take it,” the opening track off of the Daisy – “Vices” – kicked in and shattered ear drums.
Brand New proceeded to play the majority of their new album, dashing in a song from The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me every now and then, but the focus was clearly on their new material. The band’s light show was enhanced by a giant projector screen at the back of the stage, which got more gruesome as Brand New broke out more and more of the harsher and heavier songs off of Daisy.
Black and white zombies began to eat flesh in time to the bass drum kick, old medical videos became juxtaposed with flower filled fields as “Sink” jumped back and forth between its verses and choruses, and during “Jesus Christ” a human sized candle lit up in reverence as orange heavenly clouds warped in and out of focus overhead. After playing their new single “At The Bottom” the stage once again became dark, band members slinked out silently, and Lacey plucked the fragile notes to “Play Crack The Sky” on his lonely acoustic guitar to end the night. With the audience united in a whispered echo of “I know that this is what you want/a funeral keeps both of us apart/You know that you are not alone/I need you like water in my lungs/This is the end,” all felt complete as we shuffled out of the House of Blues wondering when these bands would hold mass in Florida again.
