Concert Review: Escape the Fate

April 18, 2018

by Gina Dierolf

On Thursday, April 12th 2018 I attended a concert at the Reverb Nightclub located at 1402 N. 9th St. in Reading, Pennsylvania. I had the pleasure of seeing Haela, Vitruvia, One Day Waiting, and Escape the Fate. I missed the first two bands thst played due to work but those bands were Heartwell and Across the White Water Tower. This was my first time seeing Haela, Across the White Water Tower and One Day Waiting but my second time seeing Vitruvia and I have seen Craig Mabbitt perform with The Dead Rabbitts before but never as a part of Escape the Fate, so it was a first for Escape the Fate as well. I wasn't familiar with any of the bands songs except I coukd point out some tunes from Vitrivua that I had heard before and I knew pretty much all of the songs that Escape the Fate had played. I wanted to see them play because they were touring to a venue close by for fairly cheap and I had listened to a lot of their songs as a teenager and enjoyed them, so I thought why not. Plus, im always down to go to a show.

The Reverb all-in-all is a good venue for the price that you pay for tickets and the shows are always pretty intimate. The bands all sounded well, the only problem that occurred was that Craig's microphone would sometimes cut in and out. The Reverb is an overall good venue that I return to often. They also really good with representing local bands.

The first band that i saw play was Haela, they have a female lead singer, which stood out to me because she could sing really well and I enjoyed her voice, and I am not one for female singers. However, I thought that most of their songs had similar sounds and they didnt really move at all during the performance or look to get the crowd involved. Vitruvia has a very metal sound to their music and they have a screamer as part of the band and he knows what hes doing, hes very good at what he does as is the rest of the members, they are really good band and they like to reach out and meet with fans, they also did a cover of the Power Rangers Theme song. During Vitruvia's set is when the crowd really started to pick up and move and Josh. One Day Waiting was good and they had a very good stage presence with a lot of interactions in the crowd. One of their guitarists actually came off the stage and was playing/moshing in the pit. They played a cover of "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor." When Escape the Fate came on to play the crowd was ready. Everything got pretty crazy then, the pit really opened up, they had a wall of death and during one song people were breaking out their lighters like it was a classic rock concert, it was very cool. They played a lot of songs, some new and some old that i knew or had at least heard of. Some of their songs included, "Ashley", " 10 Miles Wide", "The Flood", " Gorgeous Nightmare," and "Love is a Four Letter Word". They played a few encore songs as well, the first song thry played as part of their encore was "Dead" by My Chemical Romance.

Overall the crowd was very well engaged and got along without any problems even though there was a lot of moshing and movement going on. I think this could attributed to the fact that it wasn't a very large crowd such gave people space to move away from these situations but still see the performers.

All-in-all I thought thst Escape the Fate put on a very good show along with Vitrivia and One Day Waiting. I would definitely pay to see those bands again and am actually going to be seeing Vitruvia again fairly soon. I highly encourage anyone to see Escape the Fate live because it is an epic experience, the whole band is really into what they do and Craig is a talented performer/singer.

P.S. also, if the venues small enough you could have the opportunity at a free meet and greet, I did but didn't want to wait around, I did regret that a tad!