This Sunday-night postpostposthardcore extravaganza is not only a brutal dude's nightmare but also a grammatical wonder. Excepting the headliner, nearly every band's name forms a technically complete sentence! Their English teachers may be proud, but all four bands have enough to be proud of already. Each act proudly sits atop the younger set's heavy-music heap — though at different peaks.
San Diego's Pierce the Veil is among the older bands on this circuit, with founders and brothers Vic and Mike Fuentes proudly rocking through their late 20s. Because of this, their take on loud rock is more seasoned and technically apt, with hardcore only used as a takeoff point for experimental flights of fancy. Equal Vision label mate We Came as Romans is greener. The band's one album to date, 2009's To Plant a Seed, was a vaguely Christian screamfest whose long-promised follow-up is still in the works.
Things get louder, though, with the two main-event acts. Though Bring Me the Horizon is technically still opening for A Day to Remember, the English metalcore foursome is popular enough in its own right to headline. One of the few acts in the genre to truly cross over from its homeland to the States, its specialty is a completely unrelenting shriekfest full of breakdowns designed expressly for wrecking shit.
In light of that, A Day to Remember, which hails from the unlikely Florida environs of Ocala, seems almost cutesy in comparison. The fivesome is known for giving its songs room to breathe with some pop-punk infusions into all that metal. No fear, though; there's still enough chugga-chugga on the group's newest album, last year's What Separates Me From You, to keep things moving.
