Concert review: A Day To Remember and August Burns Red at The Ritz Ybor (with pics)

I arrived at The Ritz later than expected and found a venue jam-packed with underage kiddies who’d gotten the memo that I missed about the earlier door time. Every show’s the same — they get younger, I get older and more intolerant.
By the time I made my way inside, Canadian post-hardcore five-piece Silverstein was about to hit the stage. I used to listen to Silverstein and the headliner, A Day To Remember, but I’ve phased both out of my system and have, for the most part, moved on to bigger and better music. Silverstein performed a set of mostly newer songs and only four from their first album, When Broken Easily Fixed. I wish they could have dug deeper into their catalog and pulled out some more earlier songs, but they just dropped the new album (A Shipwreck in the Sand) in March. Promote, promote, promote.
August Burns Red always puts on an entertaining live show. Interestingly enough, I’ve never listened to them outside of a live setting, and if their studio releases are as good as their performances, I definitely need to seek out some recordings. I’m not sure I understand the whole arms-outstretched-downward-kick-drop maneuver of frontman Jake Lehrs [pictured right] — I’ve seen this before by the lead singer of Suicide Silence. Not sure if that is a hardcore thing … or an interpretation of choreography from Jesus Christ Superstar. Either way, the crowd was dancing as expected. Well, actually, it was more like “Oh, hey guys, look — there’s Jackie Chan filming for the new Karate Kid movie! Let’s show him  all the Kung Fu moves we know!” Just for the record, none of those kids knew Kung Fu.

After waiting forever for AD2R to get their asses on stage, the lights dimmed and a video started to play with the plot as follows (and read in Keanu Reeves’ Bill and Ted voice): The band was missing  their lead singer, Jeremy McKinnon, and were about to go on stage. Oh no! So they called his ass up, and guess where he was? Paris. So extreme! So turns out, all these dudes needed was for McKinnon to get back to America ASAP so they could play this super gnarly show in Tampa and somehow, and not even science could explain it, McKinnon made it.

I was stunned.
After searching for a Delorean, the guitars to AD2R’s opening song “The Downfall Of Us All” kicked in, and boy did those Ocala boys come with enough production to host the 2012 MTV music awards.
This band’s stage setup had me looking like a curious dog with his head slightly tilted in confusion. It looked just like the stage setup for Avenged Sevenfold. OK, I take that back,  more like Killswitch Engage, with handicap ramps leading to a section above the drums for the band members to show off their athletic skills with much running in place.
I used to enjoy listening this band. Hell, I tried checking them out when they got signed to Victory Records and started to really push touring, though the shows always seemed to be canceled. At this show, they played a good variety of material from all three albums, my favorite being those selections from 2005’s Indianola Records release, And Their Name Was Treason. The band’s two, more recent releases, Homesick (2009) and For Those Who Have Heart (2007), are not among my favorites and unfortunately, the last three songs were taken from Homesick. At that point, I made my hasty retreat.