Album Review :
Concert Review: Fireflight, Abandon, and Seven Layer Soul
Concert Review: Fireflight, Abandon, Seven Layer Soul
Review by: Tyler Hess
For more pictures, go here.
Upon learning that my fiancé had scored us free tickets to this show, I was pretty stoked. Not because I am the biggest fan in the world, or even that I originally thought it was with Abandon Kansas, but because I love going to shows and I love not paying for stuff when I don’t have to. What I wasn’t completely stoked about was another concert at a church. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some church. I even lived in the back of one for over a year and a half as an intern. It just kind of bugs me how they put on shows, they really don’t know what they are doing and they kind of cheese things up when shows should be a bit more rockin’. Nevertheless, I do like hearing live music anyway, so I was up for another go of it.
The show started off with a local band of middle aged men with legit skills in music, but naturally lacking much creativity in their sound. Seven Layer Soul has a comparable sound to Seventh Day Slumber and Kutless and their last song sounded like a straight up Eddie Vedder rip off. I think it may have been their home church and a lot of the people there seemed to be familiar with their music and it must have been really cool for them to share the stage with the two other bands, so good for them. They did a pretty good job as the opening act and had enough guitar solos to make IVM’s own thirdsaint a happy man.
Next up was new Forefront Records signee, Abandon, who played an energetic pop rock show along the lines of label mates Sanctus Real. They pretty much played songs from their self titled EP and seemed like a band that could really make some breakthroughs in the next couple of years, with an infectious charm that is sure to have teenie-boppers jumping out of their knickers for some time to come. Despite an unapologetic use of spirit fingers, their show reminded me a bit of the Paramore DVD I watched a couple months back and gave me the feeling that these guys just might get really big one day.
The headlining band, Fireflight came up quickly (it was nice being able to fit 3 bands in about two hours without much waiting in between) and marked the third time I’d seen them live, but the first since “Unbreakable” came out. The biggest thing I noticed was that it was really nice to hear Dawn really be able to sing. She had some serious vocal problems a little over a year ago that caused her to not be able to talk at all except when on stage. After seeing this performance I could tell that not only were they more comfortable on stage as a band, but also that Dawn was able to really sing her heart out without fearing her voice box would blow up. They played probably 10 or 12 songs, including some of my favorites like “Unbreakable”, “Stand Up” and “You Decide”. Throw in a drum solo followed by two encore songs and it was worth the ticket price of free that I paid for sure.
These three bands had a real love for Christ show in their actions, words and songs, so if they come to a town near you at a decent price, this wouldn’t be something I’d overlook too quickly.