Asking Alexandria made their first stop in over two years at The Machine Shop in Flint, MI Friday night, where they put on an intimately hardcore metal show before a packed shop.
The first song of the night was “Don’t Pray for Me” which is off of the band’s new album “From Death to Destiny,” released earlier this year. Right as the first notes echoed throughout the venue, the crowd erupted into pure mayhem.
Without missing a beat, Asking Alexandria jumped right into “Run Free,” the first single from their new album. During this song, vocalist Danny Worsnop proceeded to take a drag from a cigarette that was handed to him by a fan.
After a few songs had passed, Worsnop decided to talk to the crowd and let them know “God damn this is a good f***ing night! I’m sweating my d**k off!” and then showed the fans how to “properly” warm up for a song by taking a big swig of some Jack Daniels whiskey.
The night was full of shenanigans from the band. At one point in the night, Danny had let the crowd know that they do not take tips in money form, but they do in fact take liquor donations.
Once they were done interacting with the crowd, they kicked right back into gear and demanded that the crowd “open this whole place up! I wanna see some violence!” and right as the song “To the Stage” started, the crowd went absolutely insane and the biggest pit of the night was born.
The next song was “A Prophecy” which comes from their debut album. Fans tend to savor the times that they play songs off of their first album, because the band will only play one or two in a normal set. Once “A Prophecy” had been ended, Worsnop starts talking about Sex, Drugs, and Rock N’ Roll, letting fans know that “Cocaine is like a vitamin, it’s essential to living a healthy life.” And that “Michigan has some of the best cocaine.”
Once finished with a little monologue, Worsnop tells guitarist Ben Bruce to “hit us with a guitar solo!” and Bruce obeyed his orders. After a little bit of soloing, the rest of the band joined in and busted out into a full blown jam session, and the crowd reacted with such an incredible amount of energy.
After the jam session, A fan brought up a round of shots for the band, and they gladly accepted. The fan walked back onto stage with another round and vocalist Danny Worsnop had said “Not right now, we need to still actually sound good. How about after two more songs?”
Bruce and Worsnop have a more than comfortable stage presence with each other. A perfect example of this would be during the song “The Death of Me,” Danny caresses Ben’s face during the bridge of the song and Ben just smiled and agreed with it.
Before the “not actually the last song of the night” Worsnop addressed how bands always say it is their last song of the night but they always come back out for one or two more songs. He also mentioned that bands aren’t “fooling anyone” when they say it is their last song. So right before the band started the song “Poison,” Worsnop said “Thank you! This is our last song of the night until we come out and play some more songs for you!”
The final song of the night (no pun intended) was crowd favorite “The Final Episode.” The voices of fans could be heard throughout the whole venue as they sang “Oh My God!” at the parts they were supposed to. Headbanging and moshing were definitely not lacking during this song.
Once the song had ended the band thanked the crowd for an amazing show and told them all to have a goodnight, and that they would be “at the bar right in the back having just a few drinks!”
Needless to say, the fans left more than happy after a successful night.
