March 24th – A long-awaited tour finally happened – Beartooth came back to Munich and they brought two amazing bands along – Motionless In White and Stray From The Path. This tour was announced exactly two years ago. It should have happened in 2022, but was postponed to 2023. So it’s been a long time coming, but absolutely worth the wait.
Earlier that day I got an email from Ticketmaster, that the show start was pushed back to 7.30 pm. Consider me surprised, when Stray From The Path went on stage at 7 pm sharp. Lately, it’s happening a lot, that show times are wrongly communicated. Always bad for the first band, but since it was a Friday night and all three bands already do have an established status among their fans, the venue was crowded, when Stray started their set with “Needful Things” from their latest record “Euthanasia”, which was released in 2022. They played a highly energetic set, with singer Drew Dijorio almost constantly on the move and jumping. People couldn’t help but get carried away by that. Crowdsurfers were reluctant at first, but after the singer invited them to go for it, they literally came pouring into the pit. Security had all hands full to catch them and see them safely out, which they handled perfectly. I’ve seen them play small venues (which a have a favor for) and they were amazing, but they had absolutely no problem kicking it in a huge venue. After all, the show was sold out with 4500 tickets sold.
Second highlight were Motionless In White. Last time they’ve been to Munich was on a headliner tour, where they played smaller venues. They were packed then, so it’s only a matter of time until they will fill up bigger venues by themselves. In fact, many of the fans that night have been equally there for Motionless In White and Beartooth. Being big with theatrics, the whole stage was covered in thick fog, when the band entered the stage performing their first song of the night “Thoughts And Prayers” from their 2019 album “Disguise”. Since I’m also the photographer, I was really blown away by the screams from the audience, when the band got on stage. Make-up and theatrics is part of the band’s performance but was not as extensive this time compared to their headline show, though guitarist Ryan Sitkowski and bassist Justin Morrow are really ahead of the game when it comes to looks. They played songs from their last four records, esp. their latest “Scoring The End Of The World”. On the setlist was also “Slaughterhouse” originally recorded with Knocked Loose’s Bryan Garris, that night with a little help from Caleb Shomo himself. From that same record, they also played “Masterpiece”, the band’s first top-ten single, and also “Werewolf” the 2nd top-ten song for the band. Motionless In White managed to grow their fan base over the last years, esp. with their songs like “Masterpiece” and “Another Life”, which not only speak to lovers of heavy music. They are a crowd-pleasing band and I’m really looking forward to their next tour, for I’ll surely be there.
Now on to the headliner – Beartooth. The big white sheet that was pulled up shortly before, fell down after the silhouette of vocalist and founder of Beartooth Caleb Shomo appeared. The show started out with “Below” from the same-titled latest record. It was the beginning of a 90 minutes set of pure power. Caleb Shomo was all over the place throughout the whole show. They played songs from all four records. The band grew a lot over the last few years. Last time they played at a smaller venue, which was sold out then. The list of venues this time shows that there’s no stopping them. Caleb Shomo’s performance radiates so much energy, it’s hard not to be caught in the rush. Throughout the whole set people were crowd surfing. Some people were guided to the paramedics because they were really worn out. With most of them that didn’t last long though and they were out again, surfing along to the music. From time to time Caleb Shomo just looked at the massive crowd as if he had to digest what he was looking at. Everyone was really going crazy. Though new songs were received well, amongst them also their latest single “Riptide”, the biggest sing-alongs were their first hits like “In Between”, “Beaten In Lips” and “Hated”. The only break for everyone to catch their breath was during the end of the set for the encore break. They closed the set with “The Past Is Dead” from their latest record “Below”. The very last song of the night was an instrumental though consisting of a drum solo and a guitar performance by Caleb Shomo himself, where he parted the audience and walked down to the soundboard to play a killer guitar solo.
The whole show left a deeply satisfied audience and I’m sure everyone will come back when those bands are coming to town again. I know I will!
For more information on the bands, follow their social media:
Beartooth
https://www.facebook.com/BEARTOOTHband
https://www.instagram.com/beartoothband/
https://twitter.com/beartoothband
Motionless In White
https://www.facebook.com/motionlessinwhite
https://www.motionlessinwhite.net/
https://www.instagram.com/motionlessinwhite/
Stray From The Path
https://www.facebook.com/Strayfromthepath
https://www.instagram.com/strayfromthepath/
https://twitter.com/strayfromdapath
~ Alex
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