AUGUST BURNS RED ANNIHILATES CONCORD MUSIC HALL IN CHICAGO
WORDS AND PHOTOS BY JIM HELMECY
On a cold and rainy December evening in Chicago, fans lined up outside the Concord Music Hall waiting to get warmed up by this tour. With a stacked line up of Crystal Lake, Brand of Sacrifice, Spite, and August Burns Red, fans were ready to shake of chill in the mosh pit.
With a venue change from the larger Radius to the smaller Concord, and 2 other shows going on in the area, it seemed like a small crowd for this show.
Tokyo’s, Crystal Lake got the chilled fans warmed up first. The last time they were in town was March of 2020, right before COVID shut everything down. They put on one hell of a show then. With some major changes in the line up over the last couple years, the band is going through a rebirth stage and has been a force to be reckoned with. The band opened with “Mephisto”, which is an opening drum solo to showcase their drummer’s (Gaku Taura) talent behind the kit. Jumping right into the next song “SIX FEET UNDER”, which got the crowd jumping. With a smaller crowd, there was definitely enough to keep a mosh pit going and a handful of crowd surfers. I would say the crowd was definitely thankful for the warm up. Crystal Lake is definitely not one of those bands to sleep on.
As fans were still coming in and the floor was starting to fill, Brand of Sacrifice took the stage next. Lead singer Kyle Anderson sounds like he’s either going to take you to hell or steal your soul, or maybe both. The boys came out swinging, and were planning on putting a hurt on the crowd. Opening up with “Dawn”, this crowd got the floor bouncing. We started dodging the surfers early, which is the way I like it. Always got to be on your toes, and you know the band is putting in a good show. During the second song “Demon King”, Kyle was yelling at the crowd to send more crowd surfers, basically it was stated “You don’t want to piss me off!!!”, and the crowd followed suit and sent what seemed like the whole floor at one time. Brand threw in their new song “Purge” with this set list, this one goes hard. I would definitely say this crowd was pumped and ready to go now.
With the first 2 bands setting the bar, Spite rolled in and kicked it over. We went back at it again dodging crowd surfers when the first song “Judgement Day” hit. So much “fun” anger with this band. This band loves to send crowd surfers, send them all I say, mosh your asses off. The crowd hit their groove again during “Caved In”, Darius Tehrani wanted the crowd to send everyone to the front. “Let’s send them, we want to set a record for crowd surfers sent over the rail”. I can tell you right now the venue security was not ready for this. Throughout the set it was never ending. It’s always exciting when Spite hits town.
Now if you’ve been under a rock in the metalcore scene for the last 20 years, ABR has been a driving force to reckon with. ABR has a way of destroying a crowd and picking them back up again to ease the pain, just to stomp them back down again. If you’re standing still at one of these shows, by some chance you’re probably getting sucked into a mosh pit sometime during the set. With this being the 10 year anniversary tour for Rescue and Restore, ABR is going to celebrate by giving the crowd everything they have. As we look across the venue, that now has a packed floor, wall to wall, fans looked like they were ready to explode with excitement. The band hit the stage with their opening number “Provision”, and we were off and running. The Concord has a wonderful flex to the floor when the crowd gets going. I always have a smile on my face when this happens, you know the crowd behind you is really getting into it. Now with the album being played in its entirety, it definitely left room for encore songs. Being so close to Christmas, ABR played “Carol of the Bells”, and yes, the biggest pit of the night was during this song. I laugh, but to see people moshing and crowd surfing to a Christmas song is entertaining. This was another fun one for us, and if you haven’t caught this tour you need to. ABR always brings a killer tour and an elaborate stage production. Catch you all in the pit on the next one.