August Burns Red is currently touring the United States celebrating the ten year anniversary of their album “Messengers”. The Metal band from Lancaster, PA formed in 2003 and has quickly become one of the biggest names in the modern metal scene.
The tour made a stop Friday at the House of Blues in Orlando.
Their set consisted of the entire “Messengers” album followed by a six song encore including a drum solo/battle between drummer Matt Greiner and Bassist Dustin Davidson and various other songs from their more recent albums. The crowd was insanely energetic the entire night with a constant flow of crowd surfers (that started not 30 seconds into the first song) and a circle pit in the middle of the floor of the Orlando House of Blues that never stopped. The audience was so dynamic and aggressive (for good reasons) that the photographers were kicked out of the photo pit after the first song and a half due to too many crowd surfers. For those who are unaware of how a typical concert photographer works, we get the first three songs of each band to stand in between the barricade and the stage (which just so happens to also be the same area crowd surfers land) to take photos.
If I’m being honest, I went into this show not knowing what to expect from this band. I knew they were a Christian* metal band signed to Fearless Records and that they had a massive following but I had never explored the hype and started listening to them. Needless to say, I was thoroughly impressed by their high energy performance and was not disappointed by the talent these guys have. Singer Jake Luhrs definitely put on a show as he threw the microphone around and danced during instrumentals and it wasn’t until I started editing my photos that I noticed guitarist JB Brubaker was wearing flip flops the entire show. Flip flops. So #Metal.
After watching a video Friday morning of one of ABR’s performances to prepare myself for their lighting I was nervous about all of the colors and back-lighting but I am very pleased with how these turned out.
