A Day to Remember, Bring Me The Horizon, Chiodos, Motionless in White NRG Arena October 1, 2014
It's always good to see a band, no matter how big or small, swing for the fences. The reality is that while you can start a rock band and tour the world, you won't always be able to pull of your dream stage show. For every Kanye-built mountain or Gaga multi-floor castle, there are dozens of rock bands stuck with little more than a banner and a dream.
And so it's nice to see a band like A Day to Remember in a venue like NRG Arena, because while they might not be able to sell the venue out, they can certainly make good use of the space. For the Parks and Devestation tour, that meant building a Mount A-Day-to-Remember-Rushmore with the band members' heads, a fake campfire, a human hamster ball and a fancy graphics package.
It may not be Mount Yeezy, but by God it's good to see a band that teens love celebrating the fact that rock music is awesome.
A Day to Remember walk an interesting tightrope. Their harder songs keep real mainstream success at bay while their more pop-punk material has made them among the kings of the scene circuit. It's not a matter of being a better band than anyone necessarily; it's just that they play a style of music that is relatable to a bigger net of people.
Five albums deep in to their career, they're a band with a lot of songs to choose from when building a 20-song set list, and to their credit do a fairly good job of mixing in stuff from most recent release Common Courtesy with older jams like "Monument" and "Have Faith In Me." The end result is a lot of people singing a lot of songs with a lot of volume.
From the outside looking/listening in, that they're able to draw a couple of thousand kids to a show on a school night without anything really resembling a traditional hit seems crazy, but when the fans start singing or jumping around or separating for a Wall of Death, you realize that young music fans, be it of rock, pop or rap, are among the most passionate. Energy is one of the benefits of youth.
It helps, much like in the world of pop and rap, that ADTR have personality. They're fun. They're silly. It's hard not to at least appreciate a band that designs their stage around giant projected versions of their faces that smile or frown depending on whether or not the song is happy or sad.
It also helps that they put together a pretty great lineup to hit the road with them, including what almost amounts to a coheadlining spot for Bring Me the Horizon.
Story continues on the next page.
