Concert Review – letlive.
Dead Throne Tour – The Egyptian Room
Indianapolis, IN – 4/7/2012
letlive. is a band that I can thank Kerrang! for introducing me to when they dropped their third album, titled Fake History, in 2011. This album won the Kerrang! album of the year, and fast-tracked letlive from a small regional act to a fairly well known progressive metal group. Most recently, they landed a spot opening for The Devil Wears Prada on their North American Dead Throne tour.
While I really enjoyed Fake History, and in fact put it on my list of best albums of 2011, letlive was still on the fence for me – they could either be a decent band with one really good album, or they could be a breakthrough band that with great things on the horizon. As it so often happens for me, the make or break judgement call would be made based on their live show. It came down to this: Was the album overproduced and making a mediocre group look better than they actually are, or was this group really talented, and ready to kick my ass? I went into this show with high expectations – letlive, lets party.
The Venue:
This show was at The Egyptian Room at The Murat Theater, which is a great venue for a crowd of 1000 to 2000 people. It boasts an extremely wide stage that allows a lot of people to be very close to stage. The Devil Wears Prada actually had a fairly decent turnout in the admittedly tame metal scene in Indianapolis, so it was nice to have a crowd to enjoy this show.
The Show:
From the very beginning, it was evident that lead singer Jason Butler was going to steal the show. His energy level was amazing, as he ran back and forth and jumped all over the place…it was like he literally couldn’t contain his excitement. As addictive as this energy level was, I was even more impressed with the way he sounded – he absolutely nailed the vocals during this show, which included everything from impressively high prog-metal screams to smooth-sounding clean vocals. It’s my belief that the vocals are one of the primary things that make letlive great, and this was a real concern for me for their live show – if the vocals were weak, the whole band would lose their appeal to me. Jason absolutely did not disappoint – he was brilliant.
However, to be fair, Jason did have a ton of help when it came to bringing energy to the show. The entire band was juiced up – a fact that clearly set them apart from other bands that played that night. The show was high energy from beginning to end, and even when they slowed the show down to play the song Muther off of their latest album, there was still an intensity and passion among the band that was really impressive. (By the way, the song Muther is really cool, check it out here)
As a unit, the band sounded extremely good together. They played with a confidence and experience on stage that is atypical of an opening band, showing that even though this may be their breakthrough album, letlive is no rookie on stage. Most impressive musically, other than the vocals, was the precision timing of Anthony Riviera on drums. Timing is extremely crucial in the prog metal genre, as there are so many things going on in the songs, and it always seem that the greatest prog metal song is a few mis-timed notes away from just chaos. letlive embrace this challenge, on their album as well as their live show, and their timing was just extremely precise. Kudos to the drummer for his work.
As far as the show composition goes, there really wasn’t a single weak point. While I couldn’t even begin to pick my favorite song off of their last album, my favorite song live was easily The Sick, Sick, 6.8 Billion. This song is just awesome, and I couldn’t believe with all that it has going on, they pulled it off so flawlessly live. They also had really strong efforts with the songs Renegade 86 and Casino Columbus – the latter of which has some incredibly hard vocals that solidified Jason Butler’s greatness in my mind. All in all, I fully believe that letlive outperformed all of the other bands there that night, including long term veterans Every Time I Die, and heavyweight headliners The Devil Wears Prada.
letlive’s show, albeit short and sweet, was truly was great, and it left me wishing there was more – more of the show, more material, more albums down the road. I have no doubt that if they continue on the path they are on now, letlive will soon be enjoying the headlining slot on one of these tours.
Another show in the books. Thanks to the guys in letlive for making it a great one! And if the show wasn’t enough, a special thanks to the guys at Letlive for chatting for a few with us after the show!!
Check out the pictures above for a couple shots of the guitarist and lead singer for Letlive hanging with staffers from The Music Pill. (Left, guitarist Jeff Sayhoun. Right, singer Jason Butler)