The first act of the night was Tribute To Nothing and to be honest the music was boring. Standard emo with no face. The guitars were to easy and the drumming was way from tight. And to top it all the vocals weren’t even in tone. And when a band can perform like that it makes you wonder if it just isn’t way too easy these days to start a band, record an album and do a supporting tour. Tribute to Nothing should reconsider their future and maybe try some new members in the band or take serious lessons in how to make good, solid original music.

 

One and a half year. One and half a year!!! That’s the time I have been waiting for this night, to see BoySetsFire and experience the ultimate feeling of heavy metal, anger and moshing. How could I know that I had to wait the same time in hours before my dream would become true?

I expected the band to enter the stage by playing my favorite song, because they always do so. But they didn’t. Instead of that, they seemed to feel a little bit uncomfortable with the sound. And although they played their first songs really well, and although they promised to play as many songs as they knew, I felt betrayed during this part of the set; my heroes did not really enjoy performing here and the bass player had to change the top of his amp in order to have a good sound. I was a little pissed off and another disillusion was taking part of me.

But then, when everything seemed to work out well, the ‘magic’ got into the ‘Melkweg’, especially when ‘Handful of Redemption’ was played, both the band and the crowd got insane and my mood started to increase every minute, as well as my movements. Still not my personal song and I started to get worried: ‘What if they won’t play it? No, can’t be,’ I kept saying to myself.

The set included a lot of songs from every album released so far, with my personal favorites like ‘Release the Dogs’ ‘Foundations to Burn’ and the incredible ‘Last Years Nest’. The band even played two and a half acoustic songs, which I really did not expect. After that, the insane party continued, with a lot of people crowdsurfing, stagediving and a real enthusiastic, smiling band to play a combination of hardcore, rock and emo.

‘We’ve got only three more songs for you left’ the singer said. Now I really started to feel worried. My teeth were bleeding, I couldn’t feel my left arm and my stomach was hurting as hell due to participating in activities on the dance floor. Of course I was no pussy, so I continued dancing but kept praying.

And only five minutes later, when the last song started, my prayer got heard and ‘After the Eulogy’ was setting in. ‘Rise!! Rise!! Rise!! Rise!! Rise!! Rise!!’ I was totally loose and felt insane. The moshpit was awful, I felt like broken into a thousand pieces, but my god, how I loved this moment and the whole night. ‘Where’s your anger, where’s your fucking rage!!!’ Heavier, faster, stronger than I’ve ever witnessed before, I was enjoying this song. ‘Unless we rise! Unless we rise! It was coming, it was so close, I felt so overwhelmed.

Rise!!

Rise!!

Rise!!

Then, as in a reflex, I grabbed the shoulders of my neighbor, jumped, pushed myself even higher into the air and shouted with every inch of my body that could possibly generate energy:

 

TEARIT DOWN!!!!!

 

Rise!!

Rise!!

Rise……………

 

What a night, what a performance, what a contrast in one show. At first the gig looked like a disaster and everything seemed to fail. But as the set continued and so many incredible songs were played tremendously, the 17^th of March got memorable. And I was ‘tearing it down’ for the first time in my life. If I was Trey Parker I would be singing: ‘Now you’re a man, a man man mahuan!!’