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| Anberlin
photos by Eddy Duryea - OFC Contributor |
January 18, 2012 Orlando. Anberlin plans to go into the studio to record their sixth studio album, with a tentative release date sometime in June. But before the alt-rock group fine-tunes their album, they decided to embark upon a short tour in their home state of Florida; including one stop in Atlanta.
“We figured we would do a short tour for you guys before we hit the studio,” front man Stephen Christian said during the show, stating it has been a while since Anberlin performed in Florida.
Supported by States and Foxy Shazam, Anberlin played at the Beacham in Orlando this past Wednesday (Jan. 18). Female-fronted States put on a good performance, including a cover of Gnarls’ Barkley’s “Crazy”. Foxy Shazam performed next, putting on an extremely eccentric show. Amidst the bizarre dancing each band member participated in, vocalist Eric Sean Nally ate five cigarettes lit-end first.
Anberlin burst onto the stage with their fast-paced single from Cities, “Godspeed,” followed by other energetic hits: “We Owe This to Ourselves” and “Paperthin Hymn.” The light show was impressive; there were columns of colored bulbs behind them while the overhead lights moved and changed colors.
Afterwards, the band took us back to their heavier years (2003 and 2005) with “Change the World” and “Never Take Friendship Personal.” Since this wasn’t a tour promoting a new release, Anberlin played a wide spectrum of songs from their discography. They toned it down and played one of their acoustic singles: “The Unwinding Cable Car.” With minimal background noise, it was easy to hear Christian’s elegant vocals.
Anberlin then played a revamped acoustic version of “Alexithymia,” which Christian told the audience that the band vowed to “never play again” due to an embarrassing mistake they made playing it live years ago. In my opinion, the alternate version ended up making more of a profound impact than the album version due to the added percussion and much lighter guitars.
Although “Dismantle. Repair.” is not a single, it prevails as one of Anberlin’s most popular songs, and had the crowd singing along to the “whoa”‘s of the chorus. They decided to close with their most popular single “Feel Good Drag,” which had the entire audience off their feet and moving along throughout high-energy conclusion.
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Of course the crowd was anticipating an encore and soon enough the band came out and performed the final epic track from Cities, “*(fin)”. “*(fin)” has previously been performed numerous times as their encore, and I think it is by far their most fitting track for a grand finale.
According to drummer Nathan Young via Anberlin’s Twitter, the band has 20 demos completed, and we should look for Anberlin’s new album sometime later this year.
In the meantime, Young, Underøath’s guitarist Tim McTague, and Tallhart’s Reed Murray formed a side project called Carrollhood. Christian plans to release his second album with his solo project Anchor and Braille titled The Quiet Life, later this year as well.
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