Most people that know me or read my blogs know my love for August Burns Red runs pretty deep. They fell into the early metal-core scene for me and over the years have never disappointed between albums and live shows. I did recently see them with Killswitch Engage in San Francisco, but it was nice to get a full set from them this time.
We Came As Romans is one of those bands that I’ve known about for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually listened to in any great length, but knowing that at one point they had two singers for clean and screaming vocals I was curious to see how the band rounded out now.
To say that they were impressive, would be a bit of an overstatement for me. I think that in this particular case, my preference in music didn’t quite jive with their style or sound, which is completely fine, but I will say that it seemed from some friends I had there, that they were exactly what they were expecting and more. I will also say that the lack of the other singer was definitely felt on stage by the emotions that were being portrayed by the band, so you can tell they were putting their all into it, and that definitely showed for me in a very positive manner.
When ABR was set to go on, I was a tad surprised to see them open with their cover of System of A Down’s Chop Suey, with half of it being their stage intro, and the other half they cut into and played live. It’s surprising simply because you usually don’t see bands open with a famous cover like that, but it completely worked and got the crowd into it long before they came on stage, so kudos!
Then they ripped through fifteen tracks that encompassed their entire discography, and while they left a few out that I would have loved to hear, this was a full complete set that was absolutely brutal from start to finish. It didn’t feel like the pit ever stopped moving and Jake’s ability as a frontman has only grown more and more into one of the more powerful ones in music, knowing how to manipulate the crowd perfectly.
The dueling guitars and switching guitars between members JB and Brent were more than exciting, they were almost breathtaking. It was in that moment that I realized that ABR needs to get more recognition than they do for their playing and song writing abilities, they are complete shredders and deserve to be known as such instead of continuously getting lumped in with genre’s that they may not necessarily belong, but that’s just my two cents.
All in all, an absolutely amazing show, and entertaining from start to finish.
