A Day To Remember Nearly Steal Silverstein's Show

Sound Academy

Toronto, ON

on Sep 24 2009

Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

09/25/2009 3:02pm

Never underestimate the power of a few hundred angry teenagers.

I arrived at the Sound Academy just in time to see Edmonton's Ten Second Epic finish their last two songs. I expected a bit of a wait between their set and tunes from Ocala, Fla.'s A Day To Remember, but that was not to be.

While the roadies were setting up the Floridian quintet's gear, Silverstein guitarist Josh Bradford came on stage with his hair tied up in four different ponytails. He was accompanied by a young man from a group called Skate4Cancer, who are along for Silverstein's current Canadian jaunt. Bradford's hair was cut on stage, and it was announced he would be donating it to a child with cancer, to much applause.

Something different seemed at work during A Day To Remember's set. The crowd began chanting their name impatiently before vocalist Jeremy McKinnon, guitarists Neil Westfall and Kevin Skaff, bassist Joshua Woodward and drummer Alex Shelnutt bounded on stage.

A Day To Remember then played a set that nearly stole the show from Silverstein. McKinnon jumped around on stage and worked the crowd into a complete frenzy.

Bottles were being thrown everywhere, liquids were flying through the air, nearly everyone was jumping and those who were watching in the back had to retreat a wee bit at one point because it seemed the entire crowd had become a seething, teaming mass of angry, flailing fists and limbs.

At one point while standing near the back of the venue (which only contained a maximum of 500 people, but anyway) I found myself on the floor after having been comically plowed into by a rather overzealous 16-year-old kid who desperately wanted to get as close to the front as possible and had broken into what looked (and felt) like a full gallop to get there.

A Day To Remember aren't really that different from Silverstein. They fuse pop-punk vocals and instrumentation with metalcore growls, grunts and screams overtop of down-tuned, Asherah, Maharahj (Silverstein guitarist Neil Boshart's former band) and At The Mercy Of Inspiration-influenced breakdowns.

They seem to have practically taken Silverstein's sound and added more jumping to their set, instead. (McKinnon himself acknowledged Silverstein's influence and said he'd been listening to him since he was about 16 years old). A Day To Remember are slightly heavier than Silverstein vocalist Shane Told and company, though, and McKinnon seems to already have a better idea of how to manipulate the crowd to his will.

By the time their set was over, you could overhear people remarking about its intensity, and one particularly sweaty kid mentioned to his friend that "there is no way Silverstein can top it."

A wait followed, during which the Sound Academy's curtain was closed while roadies prepped the stage. Vocalist Told, guitarists Bradford and Neil Boshart, bassist Bill Hamilton and drummer Paul Koehler appeared on stage after the crowd began chanting their name (though not as loudly as they did for A Day To Remember) and ran through three tracks from this year's A Shipwreck In The Sand before launching into "Smile In Your Sleep" from 2005's Discovering The Waterfront.

The majority of the tracks in Silverstein's set were drawn from those two albums. The band only played one tune — "My Disaster" — from the lackluster Arrivals & Departures, while two songs from their 2003 When Broken Is Easily Fixed debut were brought out.

At times it seemed Told was having trouble switching from screaming to singing, so Hamilton handled backup screaming here and there. You can't really blame him, since the alternation is hard to execute, but considering he had no problem doing this during the band's earlier days, one has to wonder just how much of a toll touring has taken on his voice. It wouldn't be surprising if it has seriously affected his voice, given we've seen the same thing with Alexisonfire's George Pettit, who's hurt his voice from the non-stop screaming.

While Told did his best to bound around on stage, he didn't truly work the crowd up until the band's encore, when they brought out "I Am The Arsonist" and "Bleeds No More," the two heaviest songs they've ever written.

By that point, half of the crowd remained (which truthfully might have something to do with curfews). Leaving the explosion to last is a good strategy, sure, and Told's anger was twice that of McKinnon's by this point, but if it had come midway through the band's set instead of at the end, it probably would have been twice as apeshit in the Sound Academy as it was during A Day To Remember.

Here's what Silverstein played:

"A Great Fire"
"Vices"
"Broken Stars"
"Smile In Your Sleep"
"Born Dead" (with I Am Committing A Sin's Daniel Tremblay)
"Call It Karma"
"My Disaster"
"Your Sword Vs. My Dagger"
"Smashed Into Pieces"
"American Dream"
"Apologize"
"November"
"My Heroine"
"A Shipwreck In The Sand" (encore)
"I Am The Arsonist" (encore)
"Bleeds No More"