The Word Alive – Anniversary tour 2019 – with Aviana, Of Virtue and Make Them Suffer in Munich at the Backstage Halle (05/09/2019)

Phoenix-based Band The Word Alive formed in 2008. In 2009 they already signed to Fearless Records and later that year the band released their debut EP ‘Empire’. Fast forward 10 years and here we are. The band is currently on a anniversary tour run, which they started with a few dates in the US, followed now by an extensive European/UK run, which includes a performance at the famous Slam Dunk festival on May 25^th/26^th in the UK.

Anniversary tours always promise to be something special, no exception with The Word Alive. They brought a huge set-list with them that included 17 songs from every era of their career. Over the last few weeks the band asked the fan via social media which songs they’d love to hear live and made clear, that for some songs it’ll the be the last time to be performed live, esp. the early songs.

The tour line-up this time was a bit diverse with Make Them Suffer as arguably a pretty heavy band being the ‘odd one out’ that night. That said, it wasn’t really taking anything off the awesome atmosphere throughout the whole night.

Starting the night with Aviana from Sweden and Of Virtue from Lansing, MI. Both bands quickly made a connection with the audience. Even though they were not well known to the crowd they got them going throughout their performances. Safe to say they both made new fans and hopefully will come back on tour soon.

Make Them Suffer from Australia turned it up a notch with a solid performance and a never ending mosh-pit.

The Word Alive played their biggest headline-show to date in Munich. Though the place wasn’t officially sold out, it was pretty packed, but there was still enough space for everyone to participate in certain mosh-pits and circle pits that happened on a regular basis during the set. First part of the set list was reserved for the early songs of The Word Alive, like ‘The Hounds Of Anubis’, ‘Epiphany’ ‘The Wretched’ and ‘2012’. Judging from the crowd’s reactions, those songs still belong to the fan’s favorites. The Word Alive gathered many new fans through the release of their last two records ‘Violent Noise’ and ‘Dark Matter’, also one of the reasons the band plans on putting the new stuff in the center of their attention and building the new set-lists around those songs. But not to worry for those who attend the anniversary tour shows, since you will get a show that mirrors the whole career and development of The Word Alive. Aside from the band’s own songs, they also performed ‘Rise’, the theme song of the 2018 League Of Legends World Championship. Originally the song is performed in a collaboration of Mako, The Glitch Mob and The Word Alive, but since the vocals of The Word Alive’s vocalist Telle Smith play a huge part in that song, the other participants weren’t really missed in the live performance and with a little help from the audience, shouting ‘Rise’ at the top of their lungs, the song lost none of its power. Another song the band added to their live set list was ‘The Runaway’ from their record ‘Real’. The 90 minutes performance was closed with one encore, probably one of the most popular songs of the band ‘Life Cycles’, where Telle joined the crowd in the pit.

With more tours coming up in the US, including a co-headline tour with Miss May I and more anniversary tour dates, the band is kept busy for the rest of 2019. But they promised to be back in 2020. One thing is set – WE will be there!!

For further information on the bands, follow their social media:

The Word Alive

Make Them Suffer

Of Virtue

Aviana

Contributed by Alex Bock, https://twitter.com/abphotomjp