I got to see Life of Agony tonight at The Roseland Ballroom, one of NYC's larger venues. I have been a fan of their music ever since I saw their video to "This Time" back on Ricki Rachtman's Headbanger's Ball, but unfortunately I had yet to see them in concert 'til tonight. LOA is really an under credited influence on music today. They had an emo/metal fusion thing back when most metalheads thought Emo was at type of bird.
This was a hometown gig for them. I'm sure a lot of the people in the crowd could remember when they were playing small clubs in Brooklyn. The crowd was very diverse ages ranging from 15 to 45. I think this was due to the fact that LOA was opening for Mudvayne. You could tell the Mudvayne fans from the Life of Agony fans, but at this show you could tell the LOA fans were at the very least equal in proportion to the Mudvayne fans if not more.
The crowd was screaming "LOA, LOA" in anticipation and even had some people crowd-surfing before the band even went on. Like I said earlier, I haven't seen them before but they came out with a lot of fire and energy. Keith seemed a little drunk when I first saw him on stage, he later explained that he had a 101 fever but no way was he missing a hometown show. I don't even like answering the phone when I'm sick but this guy got up and sung his heart out for his fellow New Yorkers.
They opened with "River Runs Red" and the crowd popped with excitement. The third song in was a song off their new album (Broken Valley out this June) called "Love to Let You Down" which the pit loved. Everyone went wild inside like someone spiked all their beer with red bull. They played a lot of old favorites like, “This Time” and “Bad Seed”. Their set time was limited (they were an opening act).They only played about 45 minutes, but it was 45 minutes of pure metalhead joy. If that was Keith sick I would love to see himhealthy. I only wished they had played more off of Ugly and Soul Searching Sun but I can't blame them for having a tight schedule.
I give the performance 3.75 Red Running Rivers out of 4, if only because I really wanted to hear “Weeds”.
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