It has been said before, and it will undoubtedly be said again, that the key to putting on a great rock concert is not necessarily the music. It also is not always the performer that matters. There have been plenty of bad concerts given by great bands.
But those who build a name for themselves on their live act do so with the energy and enthusiasm put into their shows.
Fear Before the March of Flames, like many hardcore bands, gets by quite a bit on their stage presence. Since Dave Marion's lyrics cannot be understood through his shrieks, and since it can be difficult to pick out any melody in the swirling and deafening guitars, the most important thing is the reaction they can pull from the fans.
By those standards, the group's performance at The Buffalo Icon Saturday night cannot be criticized.
A year ago to the week, Fear Before played at Broadway Joe's in the middle of an average lineup. At that time and place, they received little attention. Only a handful of people had heard their debut, "Odd How People Shake."
A full year of touring and the release of their second album, "Art Damage," has given the band the status to bat cleanup in a better touring lineup, after Transistor Transistor, Circle Takes the Square and Fire When Ready.
This success has afforded Fear Before the opportunity to give their performance some more pizzazz. They put homemade strobe lights on each side of the drummer, backlighting the guitarists, and one on the floor facing the ceiling, under-lighting singer Dave Marion's skeletal frame.
They've also added a sampler to provide a recorded intro to each tune and a few stomach-turning bass shakes.
The group may have toned down their onstage thrashing, or maybe it was just too hard to tell through the strobes. Marion has begun to focus less on climbing everything that provides a foothold and more on interacting with the front row and sharing the mic.
There is one thing Fear Before is missing. They don't have any show-stopping hit songs. They have a good set list, but no fitting finale, no knockout punch to leave listeners shaking their heads in disbelief. Their performance lacks a rising sound, a peak in the plateau.
Circle Takes the Square's verbose songs were just a little more inspiring than Fear Before's. Singer/guitarist Drew Speziale let his words guide his physical performance with kinetic crescendos and decrescendos to match the musical ones.
Circle Takes the Square sounds a lot like At The Drive In, but leaning a lot more towards Sparta than the Mars Volta.
The thrash act from Savannah, Ga. really delivered - so much so that any band would have had trouble following them, and that's exactly what happened to Fear Before. That's not to say that Fear Before wasn't good, but they were a letdown after Circle Takes the Square.
It is entirely possible that one may just tire of hardcore after awhile. In that case, the earlier acts had the advantage of coming on first to a fresh crowd. By the time the last band came out there was not a single ear in the house that wasn't ringing. To throw more hardcore on top of that might simply have been overkill.
Syracuse's Fire When Ready, New Hampshire natives Transistor Transistor, and locals The Decline and Inferis also performed Saturday night. The lineup presented the entire spectrum of experience and quality. The Decline have some work to do, but they're young. Inferis seem on the brink of being good enough to tour and benefit from it. Fire When Ready is on a short tour, and the rest are doing well on the long haul.
