![]() – “Count it All as Lost,” August Burns Red ![]() With a heart of conviction, I’ve betrayed us both So I’m going at it with your strength instead of mine Instead of fighting to be a man I just want to know who I amįighting with my fists leaves me bloody and broken almost every single time, So I’m going at it with your strength instead of mine I need you here, I need you here, I need you hereĮach and every day that passes leaves me worse off than before How must a broken man fix his brokenness if he’s not the answer? As soon as the first beat hits, the crowd is going wild and throwing down, and the vocalist throaty-yells lyrics like: These dudes are usually pretty beefy, so I have to peek around them to see the band as the lights dim and the fog machines kick into full gear. The crowd surges up to the front, and mysterious Tyler and I are packed in like sardines alongside the majestically sweaty, long-haired, sleeveless, heavily tattooed metalheads who showed up for the main performance. The metal underground can be a rough place, seemingly without much of an interest in Jesus or the people who follow him.īut then, the openers finish up, and the headliners-the really big bands with followings that pack out these little venues-take the stage. These shows draw in individuals who would probably never come close to a church on Sunday, and honestly, with good reason-I shudder to think of how most churches would treat the sub-world of metal concertgoers if they were to show up at the sanctuary doors before Sunday services. Like, the sort of stuff that makes me (as the completely non-edgy dungeons-and-dragons-playing Christian kid in the back of the venue) really uncomfortable anti-religious. Like, the sort of stuff you wouldn’t ever let your grandmother hear anti-religious. Inevitably, the openers are almost always the same, often playing into nearly every cliché you can think of regarding metal bands-frantically angry and anti-everything, but in particular, extremely anti-religious. As soon as the door opens, we’re immediately pummeled with blast beats and stale, smoky, sweaty, beer-stained air, watching the crowd undulate like a stormy sea in time with a never-ending onslaught of breakdowns and bass drops. The sequence of events at these concerts is nearly always the same: after passing the big bouncer guy with a nice denim vest (covered in similarly nice patches), we get close enough to the door to hear the muffled cacophony ricocheting around the room inside. There’s some sort of curse on my head, both metaphorically and literally). ![]() I’m fully aware that my love for the genre is probably fully playing into the irony of the whole thing, but I’m honest when I say that I don’t think I’ve seen a clearer presentation of the Gospel than when I’m at these shows with mystery-man Tyler, watching moshers throw down from the back of the venue while somehow being targeted by a full glass of beer that inevitably gets knocked off an upper balcony ledge (I kid you not-this happens to me every show. Yes, every chance we had, we would go listen to some good ol’ metalcore-a genre so soaked with irony and faux-edginess that it has itself probably become a meme at this point. ![]() If all of my stories about Tyler were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written, but my most vivid memories with this absolute enigma of a man find us traveling together to some small shady concert venue in the heart of Richmond or Norfolk, VA (one time we found ourselves in a shopping center in NoVa) to enjoy an evening of ear-splitting-scream-in-your-face-punch-a-wall metal shows together. Nearly all of my best memories from college center on my close-yet-mysterious best friend named Tyler, who became mythical in our friend group because of his penchant for mischief and his unerring tendency to seek out and bask in all of the absurd things of life. To bridge the gap of this conscious state that we live in I swear we need to find some comfort in this run down place ![]()
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