KNAC.COM - Reviews - FALLING IN REVERSE In Houston, TX With Photos!

Welcome to the LOUDEST DOT COM ON THE PLANET!

FALLING IN REVERSE, DANCE GAVIN DANCE, BLACK VEIL BRIDES, TECH N9NE, JERIS JOHNSON In Houston, TX With Photos!

By Larry Petro, News Monkey
Thursday, September 5, 2024 @ 11:45 AM

The Popular Monstour II Lights Up The Sky At The Woodlands Pavilion On August 30th

- advertisement -

All Photos By Larry Petro/Petrofyed Photography

As the end of summer seems right around the corner a tour comes through town that reminds us just how scorching things can still be. Such was the Popular Monstour II featuring headliners FALLING IN REVERSE, with support from DANCE GAVIN DANCE, BLACK VEIL BRIDES, TECH N9NE and JERIS JOHNSON/NATHAN JAMES, the latter 2 of which would be appearing on various select dates along the way.

For the stop in The Woodlands, Texas just north of the Houston metro area we got Oregon native Jeris Johnson, an artist that's a little tough to pin down to any particular rock genre. Out supporting his recent album release Dragonborn, his performance was a mish-mash of different styles from rap to metal, to deathcore to, dare I say it, Viking metal based on him starting his set wielding a Viking sword and wearing a heavy fur stole that no doubt added to his body temperature in the muggy August evening in Texas. The gates to the venue opened at 6pm and Johnson hit the stage at 6:15 so he played to a mostly empty venue that was still filing in. And while I found the majority of his time mostly unimpressive to me the track "The Story Of Our Lives" was a great tune, catchy and melodic. A music video for the song was just released a few days ago and you can check it out on KNAC.COM HERE. Johnson ended his 25 minute stage time with the cover of SEAL's "Kiss From A Rose", which only reinforces what I said about his styles being all over the place.

Setlist:

"Welcome to Valhalla"

"Take Me Away"

"My Sword"

"Story Of Our Lives"

"Here's to the Years"

"When the Darkness Comes"

"Kiss From a Rose" (Seal cover)

Next up was rapper/hip-hop artist Aaron Dontez Yates, better known as TECH N9NE. I am admittedly not a fan of rap as I don't feel like it's even 'music', and can only tolerate rapping in metal in moderation so I didn't care much for his set, which was made up of nineteen 'songs' in you include the Into and Outro, which means that each song couldn't have been more than a minute or two in length. And while I didn't care for his performance, it was apparent from the reaction of the crowd that most not only knew who he was, but were at least fairly familiar with his music as many sang along with each and every track.

Setlist:

Intro
"Industry"
"Riotmaker"
"SOTG"
"Einstein"/"KCMO"
"The Beast"
"WWC"
"T9X"
"Come Gangsta"
"Brightfall"
"Blackened"
"URALYA"
"Dysfunction"
"Caribou"
"Like I Ain't"
"Face Off"
"Hood"
"Stamina"
Outro

Now, according to the set times that were provided in our approval emails the next band up was to be DANCE GAVIN DANCE, but when we arrived into the barricade to do photos we immediately noticed that it was the setup for BLACK VEIL BRIDES instead. This was quite disappointing as BLACK VEIL BRIDES was the band I most looked forward to seeing next to FALLING IN REVERSE. Still, main man Andy Biersack and company made the most of their far-too-brief 7 song appearance, kicking things off with "Faithless" and included a rousing cover of Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell" before concluding things with "The Legacy", "Knives And Pens" and their

biggest hit to date, "In The End", which brought out the crowd vocals in loud numbers. Personally I would have been fine if this tour had been just FALLING IN REVERSE and BLACK VEIL BRIDES.

Set List:

"Faithless"
"Bleeders"
"Devil"
"Rebel Yell" (Billy Idol cover)
"The Legacy"
"Knives And Pens"
"In The End"

So that left post-hardcore act DANCE GAVIN DANCE as the next band up. This band clearly had the crowd's attention as they kicked things off with "Spooks" from their 2011 album Downtown Battle Mountain II. Led by clean vocalist Andrew Wells, who was sporting a rainbow-striped jumpsuit, and unclean singer Andrew Mess who, as opposed to his vocal counterpart, was dressed simply in a t-shirt and shorts, the band got an 8-song limit of material such as "Synergy", "Straight From The Heart", "Lemon Meringue Tie", "Speed Demon" before ending things with the appropriate "Evaporate". Again, another crowd-pleasing performance, though my impression was still tinged with the disappointment of them being placed higher than BVB on the bill.

Setlist:

"Spooks"
"Synergy"
"Straight From The Heart"
"Lemon Meringue Tie"
"Carve"
"Speed Demon"
"We Own the Night"
"Evaporate"

Now I had seen FALLING IN REVERSE at least once before but only as an opener for AVENGED SEVENFOLD when they came through town last October so I was really looking forward to seeing what they would bring as a headliner, and boy was I profoundly impressed!

Not only was the band on fire performance-wise, they had enough pyro in tow on this tour to make Beavis cream in his shorts. Seriously. The band must have taken cues from DISTURBED's tour from last year where they managed to set off a venue's fire prevention system at least twice, including the first time in this same venue. FALLING IN REVERSE wisely adjusted their pyro setup to be lower in the air because if it had been at the elevation that DISTURBED's was it would have triggered the fire suppression with the first few minutes of the show. From the opening numbers "Prequel", "Zombified" and "I'm Not A Vampire" the pyro was used early and quite often throughout nearly every song they played. The stage was adorned with the ever-present elevated platform that ran the length of the front of the stage, making for an absolute challenge for us photographers in the barricade, save for frontman Ronnie Radke who spent the majority of his time pacing the platform from side to side like a caged tiger as he belted out the band's hits like "Fuck You And All Your Friends", "The Drug In Me Is You" and "Losing My Mind".

A large LED video screen served as the backdrop for the band and would show clips starting with the band being followed from their dressing room to the stage to start the show and would also project the band's music videos that accompanied the songs they played, which was quite interesting to see how Radke and his cohorts have grown and changed appearance from the early emo, pre-full tattooed years. One of the highlights of the show was Radke's interactions with the crowd. He can be very polarizing on social media and love him or hate him, he is a consummate entertainer and during his time getting the crowd to admit that they were assholes, he used that as a segue into the track "Just Like You", which introduced something called the 'asshole cam', which was really just a member of the road crew who came out onstage during the song and panned the audience and band, projecting the images to the backdrop screen as the lyrics displayed with a middle finger emoji following along so that even those that weren't familiar the song could easily sing along.

At the conclusion, which was just the band's 9th number, Ronnie wished the crowd a good night and safe travels home, which elicited a chorus a boos from those in attendance, to which Radke responded, "What? That's what an asshole would do so go home now, good night." As he left the stage the cameraman once again followed the band down the hallway towards their dressing rooms, only to be stopped at the elevator by the presence of a slightly pudgy redneck in a cowboy hat and revolver (a toy one obviously) who would convince the band to return to the stage while all donning cowboy hats. This would lead to what in essence was a 5-song encore, beginning with "All My Life", a song the band did with Jelly Roll. Hats tossed aside, FALLING IN REVERSE finished things off in a flurry, lighting things up with "Voices In My Head", "Popular Monster", the quite apropos "Watch The World Burn" and "Ronald".

This tour continues through the end of the month where they'll conclude on 9/26 in Los Angeles. This is quite literally the hottest tour of the summer so don't miss out! Remaining Dates: