Written and Photographed by Austin Spruill
The Poisoned Ascendancy Tour featuring co-headliners Trivium & Bullet For My Valentine revisiting their respective modern classic albums “Ascendancy” and “The Poison,” for a 20 year celebration came to a close in Raleigh, NC at the Red Hat Amphitheatre on Sunday night with support from heavyweights August Burns Red and Bleed From Within. While originally slated for a much more expansive world tour, the tour only made it through a UK/Europe and a North America run. The rest of the world tour was scrapped just days prior but despite this unforeseen development, the tour package brought their A game to the final date and fans were packing out to get their last chance to be right up in the middle of the action.
Bleed From Within did an excellent job of riling the crowd up, powering through a roughly 25 minute set of blistering Scottish riffage and bloody breakdowns featuring a guest appearance by August Burns Red’s own Dustin Davidson, whose own band followed up the night with their own crushing performance. The energy was no less electric as the Pennsylvania-hailing metalcore veterans took the stage to take things to the next level, kicking their set off with an incredibly entertaining cover of System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” and ending their set with their classic “White Washed.”
The first of the two tour namesake albums to be performed was none other than “The Poison” by BFMV. Preceding the intro of the album was a cool visual stitch of news clips from the time period that the album came out, played on the enormous backdrop above the drumset on the back riser. This was a perfect touch to highlight the sentiment of the celebration of a landmark album for the band that helped launch their career further than they probably ever dreamed it would. As the band took the stage, cheers of “Bullet, Bullet, Bullet” rang throughout the amphitheater, bringing about a perfect unity of the crowd and band as they took the stage to kick the celebration off with “Her Voice Resides” before diving into other fan favorites by the likes of “Tears Don’t Fall” and “All These Things I Hate” to tremendous reception. The celebration didn’t end here though, as the crowd was still ready to keep it rolling with Trivium.
As Trivium took the stage to close out the night, the audience was well warmed up and receptive to the final face melting of the night. Opening their set with “The End of Everything” and “Rain” set the crowd on fire, and got the crowd surfers moving like at no other point in the night prior. Security was on point, however and there were few issues. On and on the band moved through fan favorites and deep cuts, one song after another, pummeling the audience with riffs on riffs and invoking a broadly felt and satisfying feeling that they had indeed just been part of a something special and would be eager to tell their friends about it for many days ahead.
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