Let’s get one thing out of the way straight off the bat: Crossfaith is really, really good live. The Japanese “future metal” band made their return to VANS WARPED TOUR this summer, and VKH Press was at the Coral Sky Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida to experience the madness.
The band started playing on the Monster Energy stage at 11:15 AM. The audience turnout was, unfortunately, rather small due to the early time (the majority of attendees were still stuck in their cars line waiting for parking), but that didn’t deter a handful of local fans and music lovers looking for cool up-and-coming bands from making the trek across the festival grounds to the stage.
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| Vo. Ken |
You could tell that this was going to be a good performance the second the band came out on stage. The members were full of energy, and exuded a rockstar charisma that has become hard to find in the U.S. metalcore scene, which as a whole has suffered from a lack of originality for years, especially in the area of live performances. When vocalist
Ken came on stage, he screamed "Are you guys ready to party?!" as the band opened with the all-powerful “Monolith,” one of their signature songs. This song is full of extremely rough vocals, and it really speaks to
Ken's talent as a live performer that he was able to hit every scream and growl.
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| Ba. Hiro |
After "Monolith",
Crossfaith got the party going with “Jagerbomb,” another fan-favorite, during which
Teru was able to crowdsurf at the end for a few brief seconds on a group of no more than 20 people. By this point, more people had made it into the festival, and an outer crowd of curious onlookers had begun to form behind the main crowd. The energy that this band radiated was highly contagious.
Crossfaith then proceeded to switch up the vibe with “Eclipse,” which features solid breakdowns and rough vocals mixed perfectly with almost pop-like synths and dubstep music. This is a song that will have you jumping up and down one minute and headbanging or moshing the next, and it swept the audience away.
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| Gt. Kazu |
Following "Eclipse" was "Countdown to Hell", during which the band successfully initiated two instances of the infamous "wall of death" (a moshing activity where the crowd in the mosh pit divides into two sides, which then move as far back as possible before rushing forward and colliding with each other). Again, as with
Teru's crowdsurfing and the band's interaction with the audience in general, I found this to be especially impressive given the small crowd. The band continued to give their all to the audience in spite of their small size with "Omen", getting the entire crowd to crouch down on the ground before jumping up to the sound of synth beats and breakdown chords. It was a futuristic homage to
Slipknot's "Spit It Out" live performance, and kept the crowd's energy at peak levels. After thanking everyone for coming out,
Crossfaith finished with epic "Leviathan", a track off of their
ZION EP, Unlike the other songs, this track was less about spiking energy and more about creating an extremely epic atmosphere. It showed that, as good as
Crossfaith is at creating epic metal/EDM fusion music, they have a lot more unexplored potential and depth, and if the promotional tracks for their new album are any indication, we'll be seeing a lot more of this side of
Crossfaith on their new album
Xeno, which was released this month.
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| Kbd. Teru |
I saw a lot of bands perform at
WARPED TOUR that day, some of which I'd seen before, and some of which I was experiencing live for the first time. Very few of them made an impact on me the way that
Crossfaith did with their electrifying performance. It was a crying shame that
VANS scheduled them for such an early performance, and as I watched the (often bored-looking) crowds at other bands' performances, I couldn't help imagining how much more fun they would be having if
Crossfaith had taken over the stage. Still, the band gave 100%, and by the end of the performance they had hooked the audience in addition to gathering a slew of onlookers that were drawn in by the energetic performance. It would be great to see this band in action on their own tour, or perhaps co-headlining tour with a band that would complement its energetic style (I'm looking at you,
Beartooth). I highly
recommend seeing this band live, and I look forward to seeing them again in the future.
Special thanks to VANS WARPED TOUR for making this live report possible and to David Weaver of Burst Method for sharing his photos! (Photos from the stop in Columbia, MD)
Check out our interview with Crossfaith here:
INTERVIEW: CROSSFAITH @ VANS WARPED TOUR 2015
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