Photos and Review by Bethany Anna Packer
Galleries: Nothing More, Of Mice And Men, Badflower
Rock group Nothing More’s Truth Tour landed in Boston last Friday, bringing along with them a stacked line-up including Of Mice and Men, Badflower and Palisades.
Palisades started the evening to an already packed venue for such an early start. The New Jersey group opened with a power punch of energy that had the majority of the audience already moving and singing along.
Up and coming band Badflower was next to take the stage at the House Of Blues. I was eagerly anticipating seeing the L.A. founded rock band perform for the first time. Singer Josh Katz is the perfect front man and had fans reeling and reaching for him over the barricade. The group is currently riding the wave of their first full length album OK, I’m Sick, and they sampled tracks from the new album as the crowd sang along.
Metal-core group Of Mice and Men was up next. With the departure of original singer Austin Carlile in 2016, Aaron Pauley stepped in as lead vocalist and the band has continued on. Throughout the set, the group kept the energy up and the breakdowns hard. Of Mice and Men definitely had some fans that showed up just for them, and small circle pits began to churn within the crowd. While the group’s sound was a heavier departure from the opening bands, Of Mice and Men fit right in, and had the audience primed for the night’s headlining act.
The crew raised a white curtain over the stage, projecting Nothing More’s logo as the energy buzzed throughout the room. Front man Jonny Hawkins took to the stage as a silhouette spray painting on the curtain, then climbing a tall ladder erected onstage to crank a hand turned siren. The volume escalated, washing over the audience as the shroud dropped to reveal the band. Hawkins, shirtless, barefoot and half painted in black body paint had the crowd in the palm of his hand from that moment on.
Hawkins’ stage presence and charisma are palpable. Guitarist Mark Vollelunga and bassist Daniel Oliver spent the set moving around the stage, as drummer Ben Anderson pounded away at his set, at times accompanied by Hawkins on a center stage kit.
Nothing More put on an incredible show, their production including elaborate lighting, smoke cannons and of course Hawkins’ well known mechanical scorpion contraption. The band closed the evening with a powerful cover of Skrillex’s “First of the Year (Equinox)” and Queen’s “We Will Rock You” before ending with an epic drum solo to “Salem (Burn the Witch)”.
The group has the reputation of not doing encores, they just don’t believe in them. Instead they exhaust all the energy that is left in their system, leaving it all out on the stage by the end of their set, which is exactly what they did in Boston.
Nothing More at the House of Blues – Boston, MA
