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As I was walking to the venue from my car, a bum asked me for change as I passed by him. Having $7 in my pocket and no coins, I told him I was sorry and kept walking. About five steps later, I heard him ask if my legs were real. Since I was walking away from him, I'll never know if he was talking to me or not, but I felt that that was an odd beginning to the night.
I walked in during the first or second song of Smoke or Fire's set. There was a decent crowd for 6 at night, and more people were dripping in. Smoke or Fire sounded good, though there wasn't much on the stage presence front. The energy came from the melodically gruff voice of Joe McMahon. His voice didn't sound as clean as it does on McMahon, which made their new songs sound that much better. The music was tight, although hearing the same drumbeat most of the time grew tiring (it was a nice change of pace when they switched up the tempos), and I enjoyed their half hour of music.
Comeback Kid took the stage to a prerecorded intro. The stage was dark and the bassist, drummer (who was on stage only two minutes before) and a guitarist took the stage. A few seconds later, their other guitarist seemingly snuck on the other side of the stage. The singer got on and they rocked the place. They played a high energy set that was full of sing alongs and moshing. they played a good mixture of songs, and the songs from Broadcasting... sounded as good live as they do on record.
Silverstein played an incredibly tight set. I've seen them a few times, and this was by far their best set. They were all working on the same cylender, and it was spinning effortlessly. The songs all sounded great, and the crowd reaction was very entheused. I wasn't expecting to enjoy their set more than Comeback Kid's (who I thoroughly enjoyed), but I surprisingly did.
The crowd was super eager for Rise Against to take the stage. Once they did, they completely rocked the joint, proving their popularity. Tim McIlrath's voice was so strong, sounding as good, if not better, than he does on record), and the music was dead on, with the crowd singing along to nearly every song , jumping around and fist pumping during the rest of the time.
They played a good mixture of songs from all of their albums, including "Black Masks and Gasoline," "Give It All," "Prayer for the Refugee," "Ready to Fall," "The Good Left Undone," "State of the Union," "Paper Wings," "Heaven Knows," "Like the Angels," and others. They also covered "Minor Threat" by Minor Threat and an acoustic Jawbreaker song, which they played during their two song acoustic encore, followed by "Swing Life Away" (they played four songs after that with the full band). They played one of the better sets that I have seen this year, and I'm pretty sure the majority of the crowd felt the same way.