Ragefest 2019 features Crown The Empire and ATTILA as well as Veil of Maya, Gideon, HAWK and Life Right Now. The tour has been decimating venues across the country since July 26th and will wrap up tonight in San Diego. However, for metalcore giant ATTILA, a homecoming show of sorts at the Plaza Live in Orlando would be all the motivation they would need to make this their best show of the tour. The band brings a unique and high-energy show every time they step on stage, but something tells me they are going to up the stakes tonight and give the fans in attendance something they’ll be talking about long after the show ends.
As the blue lights illuminate the room, the “SUCK MY FUCK” chants begin to echo across the crowd. Soon, the sound of elegant music begins to play as if we were all at a ball or an overly fancy dinner and a man begins to give us the grammatical meaning to what word, you guessed it…Fuck.
As the fans in attendance cheer and applaud there in concert English lesson as the familiar voice of frontman Chris Fronzak cuts through the darkness. The red stage lights reveal the man himself sporting a vintage Shaquille O’Neal Magic jersey as the band breaks right into “Blackout.” The third track of the band’s newest album Villains, which was independently released earlier this year.
As the dust settles from Guilty Pleasures “Proving Grounds”, Fronz announces “This next song is one that we’ve never played while on tour before” as he dedicates it to all the strong and independent woman of Orlando. As the intro tape plays through the PA system, the heavy head-banging track “Queen” gets the crowd jumping as the band comes in. Followed by the anthem track “Subhuman” off Villains that displays guitarist Chris Linck’s skill set which includes a blistering solo. The songs deep and emotional chorus line gives the crowd a chance to add a powerful element and take it to another level.
When Chris Fronz says, “Put your middle fingers up, keep those middle fingers up,” fans know what time it is. Within seconds of “Middle Fingers Up” starting, the floor turns into a wave of bobbing heads, middle fingers and crowd surfers. Just as the break down kicks in, Fronz reaches over and grabs a pink bra that a young lady graciously donated to the show and begins to twirl it around and he walks back and forth on stage. After a couple passes, it finds its home for the rest of the show on bass player Kalan Blehm’s mic stand. Without skipping a beat, the frontman instructs the crowd to split the floor in half, and once the count down to four ends, it turns into a scene from Braveheart as both sides of the sea of humanity come crashing together…what better way to kick off “Sex, Drugs and Violence.”
Music has always been a platform to express personal feelings about many topics, but few debates get more heated than “Pineapple on Pizza.” ATTILA ventured into uncharted territory and expressed their own feelings with the web single “Pizza” in July of last year.
With one of the trippiest videos, the song live has much more intensity as hundreds express their displeasure about the controversial food. As the song comes to a break, the audio clip plays of Fronz and Kalan’s exchange as the pizza guy shows up. Blehm turns to the side of the stage and returns with a pizza box. As Fronz gets excited about the arrival of dinner, he opens it to discover there is pineapple on the whole thing. This prompts him to yell “FUCKING PINEAPPLE!!!” and launches the entire box into the crowd as the breakdown crashes in. I mean, what other show can you eat pizza in a mosh pit.
ATTILA will be touring after RageFest until September 6th in Jacksonville. Then after a few months off, the band will conquer Europe from November 7th through December 16th. For band and tour info go to https://www.facebook.com/AttilaGA/ and for all ATTILA merch and music head over to https://merchnow.com/catalogs/attila.
For info of other bands on the Atom Splitter roster, visit https://atomsplitterpr.com/.
