On Tuesday 11/21/2017 the “Holy Shit Everybody is Injured Tour” stopped by The Truman in Kansas City, ok it was not called that, it is the Rage on the Stage tour, but two of the four front men were injured casing one of them to miss time on the tour. Who were they, well read just a bit more to find out. Making their way to The Truman were I Prevail, We Came as Romans, The Word Alive and Escape the Fate.
Kicking off the night, hailing from where ever the bus takes them, was Escape the Fate. Judging by the size of the early crowd and the chatter throughout the venue Escape the Fate has a very large Kansas City following. The speculation was short lived. As they took to the stage the KC faithful pushed toward the front and sang along to every song that Escape the Fate had to offer. It was a great way to start off the night.
Next out of the gate were The Word Alive, and also the first of our injured front men. There were no thrones made of guitars, or crazy wheel chair contraptions when Telle Smith took to the stage. No, it was just a plain old folding chair. Telle proceeded to explain to the crowd that he had a badly broken leg and that there was no way he was missing any of the dates on the tour. Well since I had never seen them before I cannot really attest to this but I don’t know if being confined to the chair forced him to express all his energy through his vocals or not, but I must say, the show they put on was amazing. You could tell the other guys in the band were being mindful not to run into their front man as they bounded about the stage. Kuddos to The Word Alive for getting out there and giving it a go.
We Came as Romans were the final band between The Truman crowd and I Prevail, and We Came as Romans could just as easily be called We Came to Deliver, because deliver, they did. To me it is amazing to see the energy that all these younger bands bring to the stage night in and night out. WCAR were no different, I have seen quite a few shows at The Truman which is a new venue, and that stage has taken a beating. Their ten song set had the audience bouncing along with them as the crowd screamed along with every lyric.
And now on to the main event of the evening, I Prevail presents to you THE RAGE ON THE STAGE (imagine that in like a cool announcer’s voice). I Prevail took a simple concept derived from their fandom of Pro Wrestling and tuned it in to an absolutely phenomenal stage setting and show. Maybe this had something to do with our second injured front man of the night. Brian Burkheiser who had some damage to his vocal cords has been forced to miss some dates on tour including this one. As Eric Vanlerberghe said though they could have canceled the rest of the tour or they could continue on and there was no way they were canceling. As you can imagine the crowd loved hearing that and went bonkers. To go along with the wrestling theme the drummer’s riser was a complete wrestling ring. Again something so simple, but it made their set. About five songs into it, I Prevail asked a fan to join them on stage to help them out. The fan that was brought on was used as a heel in what would resemble a wrestling promo. The fan would be asked questions and instead of his actual responses, a previously recorded tape would provide the answers making the fan out to be a moronic old school heel. It was an awesome break in the set that provided so much joy and laughter throughout The Truman, which in today’s society, we need as much as that as we can get. Back to the music they went and for the casual fan you would not have known Brian was missing because the guys never missed a beat and sounded outstanding. For my first time seeing I Prevail, I know I will defiantly be seeing them again. I want to have the experience of seeing the whole band with Brian and come on, they put on a great show and I can’t wait to see how they try and top this one.
Photos by Amber Miller, Heavy Magazine photojournalist
Review by Ace Sims, Heavy Magazine journalist
