Congregation of the Damned Tour
Cabooze – Minneapolis, MN
11/19/2010

Marcus and I have been wanting to take a road trip to Minnesota to visit our friend Robby for the past several years. It just so happens that we were able to do it on a weekend that there was an Atreyu concert! Boom. Totally worth the 9 hour drive!!

The History:
Atreyu has been a favorite of mine for a long time. Their albums have all been really solid, and I like the energy that comes through their music. Embarrassingly, another reason I love the band is that their drummer is a primary singer in the band. Since singing and drumming are two passions of mine (even though I’m not a drummer, and I’m a mediocre singer at best), it draws particular interest to this band for me. Their drummer, Brandon Saller, is really quite good at both vocals and drums (more about that later). In addition, I love that the band has incredibly diverse music, and has songs that are very hard and fast hitting, as well as slower, more melodic hard rock songs. It’s refreshing to me when a band can be more than one dimensional, as so many are today. (I like to call that Nickleback syndrome).

Unfortunately, the first several times I saw Atreyu live, they were kind of a disaster. Back in the 2006-2007 timeframe, Atreyu wasn’t very big yet, and mostly played early at festivals on side stages.