Of Mice and Men (Photo Credit: Austin Voldseth)

It’s like any typical Tuesday night right? Wrong, not when you got Of Mice & Men included in your schedule.

It started off with the first opener Moscow, who came out with energy and a trap beat instrumental. Then as the lead singer took to the stage with the brightest, whitest, and fuzziest jacket I’ve seen she began screaming into the mic while the rest of the band trailed behind with energy. The lead guitarist dressing like he was taking the stage with Motley Crue or something shredded solos while the drummer kept flipping us all off in-between spin tricks with his sticks.

Fire From the Gods (Photo Credit; Austin Voldseth)

After them was a new up and coming band called Fire From The Gods. Running about the stage, jumping with scissor kicks, and getting the crowd hyped with all the break downs. After the first three the singer got down on a knee to get to crowd level to talk personal business about life and struggles to encourage everyone to be themselves and not overthink all the bad decisions in life. A couple songs later and one more talk about how good you should feel about life they closed with their famous song “Excuse Me” that got everyone jumping and surfing to the front to high five the band.

Bless The Fall (Photo Credit: Austin Voldseth)

Last of the openers was Bless The Fall, they’ve been around for awhile (almost 10 years now) performing shows along side a lot of other pop punk legends of the 2010 breakdown core music. Personally this was the hardest set to shoot. Why might you ask that? Well, strobes are a tricky one to shoot stills of. Yes, looks great when enjoying, I can say I did on that note. However with all the constant firing of photos and craziness of running around everywhere to follow the bands excitement I got a few keepers. The thing that stood out a lot with Bless The Fall was how involved with the crowd they got. Squirting/spitting water, group hugging and singing along on the front gate, and getting the circle pit spinning was the perfect way to make sure everyone was ready for Of Mice & Men.

Finally the moment we all we’re waiting for. The boys took the stage and performed ‘Defy’ from their new album as the opening track. There was an intense amount of strobes this set as in it put Bless The Fall’s to shame with how much there were. Luckily, there was more constant fill lights so it wasn’t too hard to make a great photo with it. I truly enjoyed the lighting set up they had with their set (kudos lighting tech) because it just matched how everything worked on when drum patters would happen with certain lights and rhythms. So after three songs and one kick to the head from a crowd surfer I enjoyed the rest of the show. I was surprised at how many people knew the entire new album word for word already and how much they wanted to mosh. With me personally I’m more of a fan of their older stuff and would have loved to hear more from ‘The Flood’ album, granted they did play “The Depths” as the last song of the encore even though that song is on the special edition released after the original album.

Words and Images: Austin Voldseth