Rise Against

Running a website independantly is expensive, and getting the word out on it is even more costly. Word of mouth on the internet just isnt enough. So we've been processing pretty little badges to get the word out so we can cover even more shows! 

 

 

Interview with Joe Principe!! And Pictures of the concert on 16-02-2009 at AB Brussels!!

Find it on: www.stagedive.be

Hello everybody!

Many of you, I'm sure, have heard a band called Rise Against, and if your ears are functioning well you also love and admire their musical ability and already have tickets to see them on their current tour when it passes close to you. If they alone can't seal your attendance I'm sure Alkaline Trio, Thrice, and The Gaslight Anthem will. This is one of the best tours in years, no doubt—get your tickets here!

So when you get to the show and head inside you'll need to find a booth that looks like the one below and join in with thousands of other people who have already voiced their support by agreeing that Meat's Not Green! Yep, it's the facts: Meat production and raising animals for food is the number one cause of global warming. No it's not cars, or planes, or even SUVs—it's hamburgers, hot dogs, and all the other disgusting things they grind animals into after they've been abused on factory farms. Ick!




Well OK, I'm sure you're bursting with anticipation of watching these amazing bands play for you soon enough, but be sure to take a minute and speak up in defense of the earth we live on—if this planet burns up where will you go to see amazing shows like this in future? Let's save this place. Thanks!

-The peta2 Road Warriors

Experience front row access to this year’s KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, featuring some of the biggest alternative rock bands of the year, including Rise Against.

Select performances from the show will be webcast live on AT&T blue room Saturday, December 8th and Sunday, December 9th. Check it out at AT&T blue room music (http://www.attblueroom.com/music). 

Virgin Festival, Day One

Concert Reviews By Mike Usinger

Publish Date: May 24, 2007

 

Published on Straight.com Vancouver (http://www.straight.com)

At Thunderbird Stadium on Sunday, May 20

On a day that featured no shortage of indignant rage and old-fashioned angst, no one should have been more pissed at life than the ice-cream guy. Thanks to his checked fedora and porn-king 'stache, ice-cream guy had the kind of look that should have got him plenty of attention–sort of a Michael J. Pollard meets the thrift-store freaks from the Hold Steady kind of thing. But because the weather was cold and shitty enough to make you wonder why the fuck you ever left Ontario, Fudgsicles weren't exactly in high demand at Thunderbird Stadium on Sunday. For most of Virgin Fest's nine hours, it pissed worse than a racehorse on a beer-and-coffee diet. As a result, the ice-cream man eventually just gave up, parking his bike under a stadium-concourse overhang with a look of resignation. At least he had the option of escaping the downpour. Many of the 12,000 or so drowned misfits, alterna-freaks, rock-radio normaloids, and 50-something chaperones in attendance weren't so lucky.

That most people stayed huddled under cover in the stands for the Bled was a good sign that the Tucson act has a way to go before MySpace makes it a household name. Nonetheless, the quintet's strain extreme of posthardcore metal was almost as captivating as Afro'd singer James Munoz's severe case of plumber's butt. The Henry Rollins Honorarium, meanwhile, went to drummer Michael Pedicone for playing in gale-force conditions wearing nothing but shorts.

Right around the time Mute Math took the main stage, Ontario's the Junction was busy reviving golden-era college-rock on the concourse's Future Shop stage. Yes, everything old becomes new again, good news for those who've been waiting for that 13 Engines reunion. Speaking of pillaging the past for inspiration, Mute Math is evidently on a mission to make '80s keytars cool again. Wearing red flowerpots on their head probably helped their cause, but the group's mix of greed-decade synth-pop, atmospheric old wave, and tribal dance rock was often hypnotic, especially if you'd made a pregig stop at the New Amsterdam Café. Whatever Mute Math is paying its drummer, based on his epic contributions to "Typical" alone, it should be doubled.

Seemingly featuring 75 percent fewer horns these days, Crowned King was playing live for the first time in months, with the new material hewing closer to the Rapture than Reel Big Fish. Singer Shaun Frank certainly knows his constituency; he announced "War" (or at least that's what it sounded like in the eye of the hurricane) as being not about Iraq, but instead the things that really matter, such as cheating boyfriends.

Back on the main stage, whatever the soundman for Rise Against was getting paid should have been cut in half. Despite boasting two guitarists, the Chicago quartet got turned into the punk-rock equivalent of a drum 'n' bass act by the frustratingly muddy mix. But considering, as singer Tim McIlrath noted, the group started out playing basement gigs, long-time fans probably didn't find the sound any worse than an average night at the Croatian Community Centre. Separating the old-schoolers from Rise Against's CFOX fans wasn't difficult: the former went ape-shit during a fine-tuned cover of Minor Threat's "Minor Threat"; the latter shit their already soggy pants at the first strains of "Ready to Fall".

As the ice-cream guy did everything but flip the floodgates of heaven the bird, Pride Tiger's turbo-charged southern rawk made the case that the concourse could really have used a Jack Daniel's tent. No less of a revelation a half-hour later was the U.K.'s Enter Shikari, which cranked out screamo-indebted noisecore blasted with banging shots of acid house.

The rest of the day was all about the main stage. Because it brought the emo-punk-flavoured rock more convincingly than any other band on the bill, Billy Talent got the most rapturous reception of the day. Being Canadian probably didn't hurt. But a more likely reason for the love was that Billy Talent has, only two official albums into its career, amassed an incredible number of made-for-screaming-along anthems, highlights on this day including devastating versions of "Try Honesty" and "River Below".

If Billy Talent got the hosers all hot and bothered, then My Chemical Romance hit dead centre with the goth girls in black eyeliner and the nonconformist boys wearing homemade pink shirts emblazoned with "His eyes are locked on hers/Her eyes are fixed elsewhere". Compared to Billy Talent and its straight-up attack plan, MCR delivered stadium-size art. As the steam literally rolled off the pit, it was hard not to get the chills from thousands of soaked die-hards screaming en masse to "Mama" and "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)". The set's moment of perfection came at the stripped-down beginning of the killer Queen-style epic "The End". Not even the pelting rain could extinguish the hoisted lighters when singer Gerard Way crooned "If you look in the mirror and don't like what you see/You can find out firsthand what it's like to be me". Somehow, after the day he'd just had, you just know the ice-cream guy could relate.