BY PAM WHISENHUNT | Go Venue Magazine
Wage War took their Manic Tour to The Truman in Kansas City April 30th, 2023. Supporting bands for this tour were nothing,nowhere. and Spite.
To be upfront, I’m not a lifelong Wage War fan. They have a few songs that get airplay and I love ‘em, but it’s really the song “Manic” that brought me to this show. “Manic” to me is such a hype, killer song. I had to hear it live.
The night started off with Spite, a four-piece deathcore metal band from the Southern California Bay area. Spite isn’t a band I would typically listen to but they sounded great live. Vocalist Darius Tehrani is an energetic front man that captured the audience’s attention. Spites fast, powerful set seemed to please the crowd.
Second up was nothing,nowhere.; a band I wouldn’t have guessed to be on the Wage War lineup. Nothing,nowhere. is a rapper/singer with a post hardcore band. nothing,nowhere. came out with a rap heavy song “THIRST4VIOLENCE” to start the set. Joseph Edward Mulherin (lead vocals) sported custom Farewell Division bibbed overalls and shirt covered with “Void Eternal” and “nothing,nowhere.” patches. A genius way to advertise their latest album. Songs in this set were a mix of rap and heavy scores, very different than the Spite set.
The highly anticipated headliner Wage War was up next. Wage War opened up with two songs “Relapse” and “Teeth” from their latest album. I was fully expecting all vocals to come from Briton Bond (lead vocals). I should have done my homework. I was photographing Bond when I heard the sweet, clean vocals of Cody Quistad (rhythm guitar, clean vocals). It threw me off, his vocals were so pure and melodic.
Wage War performed a substantial 19 song set that included something from each of their albums. Songs with the heaviest breakdowns like “High Horse”, “Slow Burn”, “Stitch”, “Death Roll” and “Godspeed” kept the crowd moshing and crowd surfing all night. There were a couple melodic songs “Gravity” and “Me Against Myself” to bring down the temperature of the room at times. Wage War ended their set with “Circle The Drain” but they weren’t fooling anyone. The crowd knew there was at least one more.
When Wage War came back out for the encore, they introduced the next song from their new acoustic project The Stripped Sessions. They performed a mellow version of “Johnny Cash”. It was the perfect spot for this song but the lull didn’t last long. The band left the stage to changed out their acoustic guitars leaving Bond to start the intro to “Manic”. The rest of the band made it back to the stage just in time for the manic scream and cryo jets going off. The finale got everyone’s hearts pumpin’ and set them off for the night.
Wage War
nothing,nowhere.
Spite
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