Affiance Fall U.S. Headline Tour – REVIEW

We had the chance to write a review of Affiance’s fall U.S. headline tour with A Faylene Sky and Sirens and Sailors. Check out the review after the break.

Plainfield, Illinois on a Monday night is not exactly a hotbed of metal/hardcore music.  So it wasn’t exactly a surprise about the low crowd turn out for the Sirens & Sailors, A Faylene Sky, and Affiance tour at Live 59.  But even with a sparse crowd those that were in attendance were full of energy, hoping that the bands wouldn’t be discouraged by having to perform in front of such a small audience.  For the most part, the bands did not disappoint.

After the local opening bands Buffalo, NY’s Sirens & Sailors was first to hit the stage, and hit it hard they did.  The five members of Sirens & Sailors took the stage each wearing the logo of the band.  The band focused on playing mostly songs of their Wasteland EP, which came out earlier this year, including “You and Die”, “I’ve Got a Masters Degree in Common Sense, and “Mirror for My Medusa”.  Vocalist Kyle Bihrle did everything he could to elicit a response from the crowd, trying to get them to start a circle pit at one point.  The most he could do convince the crowd to do was jump up and down in unison with him and the rest of the band.

A Faylene Sky from Providence, Rhode Island was next up and they also tried to take the stage by storm, but they also had to work against a small, mostly unenthusiastic crowd.  A few kids in the crowd tried to help build some energy by hardcore dancing, but got discouraged when the rest of the crowd wouldn’t join in.  That didn’t stop the band from charging through songs like “The Waking” and “Define Alive”.  A Faylene Sky did experience a minor snafu during their set when the bass player tripped over a cable and fell to the stage, but he never missed a beat and kept playing while he picked himself up and kept on rocking.

Affiance came on to close out the night and they might have been the most disenchanted band due to the lack of crowd at the show.  The band can be compared to a less technical version of Protest The Hero, but with more relatable lyrics, with vocalist Dennis Tvrdik singing about political and religious issues.  The band was celebrating the release of their new album The Campaign and spent most of their set playing songs off of that album, save for a couple of older songs and a metal cover of Europe’s “The Final Countdown”, which Tvrdik prefaced by saying that we could fight anyone that didn’t know the words and wasn’t singing along.  The highlight of Affiance’s set came during the last song, “Bohemian” when Tvrdik stepped off the stage and one by one lead all the members of the audience onto the stage when he and the rest of the band, save for drummer Patrick Galante, stood where the audience once was.

As a fan of all three bands on the tour I wish more people would have shown up to the show, but what could one really expect for a concert on a cold Monday night in the middle of nowhere when most people have school or work the next day.  It was nice to see that none of the bands decided to “phone it in” for their sets and give a half-assed performance because the crowd was so small.  It goes to show that there are still hard working bands that are happy to play shows for their fans, no matter what the circumstances might be.

Information about the review…
Tour: Affiance Fall U.S. Headline Tour
Bands: Affiance, A Faylene Sky and Sirens & Sailors
Date: November 12, 2012
Venue: Live 59 in Plainfield, IL