Last Friday (25), Between the Buried and Me’s Fall tour rolled in for the last date of its six-week run to play a show at Cannery Ballroom in Nashville, TN. Lately I’d been disappointed in turnouts for metal shows in Nashville, but this show was an exception to this trend, with the venue filled to the brim with at least 1000 metalheads, if not more. The Safety Fire started things off with a pretty short set featuring 5 new tracks off of of their 2013 release Mouth of Swords. They closed their set with their fan-favorite song from their 2012 release Grind the Ocean, “Huge Hammers.” All together these Brits put on a good show and got the crowd moving.
The Contortionist were up next, and I was stoked to see Last Chance to Reason’s Michael Lessard at the helm of the band, on his first tour with them as their official new singer. I wasn’t sure how he’d sound, but he killed it! Definitely the best possible pick for the band to have made. They played a 5-song set featuring material from their 2012 release Intrinsic, including “Holomovement” and “Solipsis.”
The Faceless took the stage afterwards, and were the best I’ve ever seen them, and played a ton of new material off of their 2012 album Autotheism. Michael Keene was like a machine, hammering out each and every complicated riff with what looked like effortless ease. The band played “Autotheist Movements” 1-3 in a row, to the delight of myself and many other fans, and although they played more newer material, they managed to include 2 tracks off of Planetary Duality, closing with “Xenochrist” (who doesn’t love that song?).
Last to take the stage, Between The Buried and Me launched into a set playing their recent release, The Parallax II: Future Sequence, in its entirety, and ending with their hit song “White Walls.” This was my first time seeing BTBAM live and wow…I was floored. They had crazy lighting (maybe not so good for photos) that created an ambiance that I’ve never experienced at a metal show. While the crowd did mosh at times and scream along, I’ve never seen such attentive fans at a show – I’m pretty sure they were just taken aback by how amazing BTBAM’s live show was, they just sounded SO GOOD! By the end of their set I felt like I’d experienced a whole different type of metal concert, it’s hard to describe how awesome this show was, how good the lineup of bands were. Do yourself a favor though, catch them on their next tour through the US (presumably in 2014)!
