Friday 30/03/07 Bullet For My Valentine, Escape The Fate, The Confession @ The Rialto Theater, Tucson Az

The night starts out with the metal and southern rock of The Confession. They are polished, nasty and mean. His voice tinged with greedy sexual angst, Taylor Armstrong delivers ‘Burn The Virgin’ amidst major riffage and pounding freight train drums. Heavy on instrumental quality ‘No Angel’ ignites the spark and crowd surfing begins. They finish their set with the black hearted and fiery ‘Dance With The Devil.’ 

The post-hardcore band Escape The Fate began in the strip clubs of Las Vegas Nevada. Their emersion in the seamy side of life is reflected in their starkly manic performance and songs that are real, raw and raucous. Frontman Ronnie Radke is genuinely relentless, vicious and harsh. He lets out one insane, hair raising scream during ‘Dragging Dead Bodies In Blue Bags Up Really Long Hills’ that we’ll never forget.

Ronnie yells “Lock and load” and launches into the brilliant piece ‘The Guillotine.’ It’s no cookie cutter post-hardcore song and proves that originality in the genre isn’t dead. Ronnie stage dives onto the horde for the third time, spins his mic wildly then falls to his knees as the song ends. During 'Situations’ he asks “You guys want to have an orgasm with us?” The mob hollers and loudly moans “ah, ah, AH!” along with the band. Riveting, magnetic and intense ETF is absolutely astonishing.