Atreyu, Memphis May Fire, and Ice Nine Kills in Greensboro NC
Last week Atreyu brought their In Our Wake Tour through Greensboro NC in support of their brand new album by the same name. Along for the ride this Fall are Memphis May Fire, Ice Nine Kills, and Sleep Signals.
Cone Denim Entertainment Center in Downtown Greensboro played host to the SOLD OUT night of metal and rock and roll as Atreyu came through NC for the first time in who knows how long. It was my first time seeing the band since 2006 Ozzfest and it was an absolute treat to hear one of my favorite bands as a teenager playing a lot of those old songs that I had on repeat for years of teenage angst. Back then was arguably their peak, but it was also the peak of that kind of heavy music. In my opinion, their two best albums The Curse and The Death-Grip On Yesterday, were heavy and they've taken a much more heavy rock approach to their music since these albums. I am absolutely not hating on their new music, I am sure that many people like it, and there were plenty of people at this show singing along to their new music. But I was very happy to hear all those songs from so long ago.
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The five-piece metalcore/heavy rock band from California features the same line up since 2004 and their onstage interaction seems pretty standard for a band that has been together for so long and seems to be pretty much the same from when I saw them back in 2006. They weren't super active on stage, just a lot of switching places on stage, but they were very interactive with the crowd. At one point the bassist, Marc McKnight left the stage and pushed his way through the crowd and spent an entire song traveling around the venue, even going up into the balcony area. Then midway through the set lead vocalist, Alex Varkatzas, jumped into the crowd and crowd surfed around while the vocalist of Ice Nine Kills took over the position on microphone.
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Preceeding the main act were the there supporting bands of the tour, starting with Sleep Signals. Unfortunately I only managed to catch the last couple songs of their set, but the band seemed to put on a really great show and surely found themselves with a few more fans by the end of the night.
On stage after them were the quickly rising horror themed band Ice Nine Kills. Each member was dressed according to a different horror movie; Guitarists were Jason and the little boy Gorgy from IT, Bassist was Jigsaw, the vocalist was in a Freddy sweater, and the drummer was likely a victim with a little blood on his head. The band goes all-in with their horror theme has their songs are also themed and written in a horror style and with references to movies.
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Next up was Memphis May Fire which is always a fan favorite. My concern at this show was that the majority of the crowd was going to leave after MMF's set, but was pleasantly surprised that everyone stuck around. The band's set consisted of a lot of their heavier music and the crowd surfing and crowd involvement really picked up.
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The crowd involvement and crowd surfing brings me to something that really bothered me from the start of this show. The security, or really the lack there of, at this show was absolutely laughable. The venue had security on staff for the show but they couldn't really care less about actually providing any kind of security. At one point someone from Atreyu's tour crew came out and asked one of the security staff to move or remove the trashcan that was sitting in the middle of the photo pit, telling him that it's a danger for anyone crowdsurfing and especially the band members that go out into the crowd. The security guy laughed at him and basically just told him that he didn't a shit about whether people could hurt themselves, because it's "not the his fault".
Well, not long after this happened, a crowd surfer popped up and sure enough he was dumped over the photo pit basically falling on/into the trash can. The band on stage at the time was Ice Nine Kills and the vocalist was reaching out over the stage basically holding the crowd surfer up from completely falling to the ground. Eventually the security grunted and sighed before casually walking into the barricaded off area to aggressively grab to crowd surfer and continue to push him out of the pit while he tripped over the metal legs of the barricade. I was completely shocked at the carelessness from the security. After this incident the security guy got on his phone and texted other security staff that showed up a few minutes later to actually do work at the front of the stage catching crowd surfers.
But throughout the night the issues continued. Crowd surfers would come through and due to the extremely minimal space between the stage and barricade, those crowd surfing would get grabbed from atop the crowd and nearly hit their head on the stage as the security aggressively pushed and pulled them around like they were the biggest inconveniences to their job ever.
Overall this was a really amazing show with some really great bands, a lot of nostalgic music, and caring bands. But the venue really fell short on this one and I really hope that this tour taught them some valuable lessons when it comes to hosting a metal concert. And if you're not going to having the proper staff and necessary safety measures in place, just don't host these shows.
