Four Year Strong celebrated the ten year anniversary of their debut LP Rise or Die Trying this fall with a second round of tour dates. The band was joined by Life Lessons, Grayscale, Like Pacific and Seaway. The show may not have sold out, but the energy at St. Andrew’s felt like it was.
Oklahoma native pop punk band Life Lessons opened the night. The band just recently releasedtheir second EP Best When in Motion, and included the hit song “Control” in their set. They also performed favorite “Hang Your Head”.
Grayscale took the stage next, continuing the pop punk sound. They opened their set with “Mum”, from their latest LP Adornment. The bands sound embodies pop punk with Collin Walsh’s vocals belting out melodic lyrics. The band ended their set with “Fever Dream”.
Canadian punk band Like Pacific opened their set with “Worthless Case”. Their set contained all songs from their album Distant Like You Asked. Their catchy riffs had everyone in the venue moving.
This set the mood for Seaway, a high energy pop punk band from Ontario. The band had just released their new album Vacation the day before. Their set included various songs from the album including “Apartment” and “Something Wonderful”.Vocalist Ryan Locke was constantly interacting with crowd surfers, always giving out high fives and fist bumps.
All of the energy from the pop punk opening bands was mild compared to how insane the crowdwas as soon as Four Year Strong took the stage. The band opened with two songs that are not on Rise or Die Trying, which is unique because it is common for band’s to end with that. “What the Hell is a Gigawatt?” and “Who Cares?” caused the crowd to erupt into a wave of crowd surfers, giving security a run for their money.
Vocalists Dan O’Connor and Alan Day never stoppedmoving. The crowd was a mirror of this, with pits constantly going. After performing Rise or Die Trying the band included even more songs in their setlist. This included more songs from their self titled LP Four Year Strong such as “We All Float Down Here”. The band closed their set with a single song encore of “Wasting Time (Eternal Summer)”.
