Emery @ The Boardwalk (Orangevale, CA)
With: Misery Signals, Remembering Never, and Eighteen Visions (Not Reviewed)
When: March 1st, 2005
My Grade: 4


So let me start out by apologizing to all the Eighteen Visions fans, they were the headliners of this tour, and I left the show early for 3 reasons: I was there to see Emery, Emery’s mosh pit wore me out, and I had a long drive ahead of me that night to get home.

I arrived at the Boardwalk with the two friends I went with and met up with some fellow ‘Scene Kids’ from my home town. The Boardwalk is a small venue, about the size of a high school gym without the height. It is a very cool place to see a show though, and gets some great rock acts coming through it if you can wade through the mostly horrible local bands.

As we went in the security slapped a wrist band on my 22 year old friend and exclaimed that he was a drinker, (which is not true) and we all had a good laugh, which started the evening off right. We got close to the front, on the side where the bands exit, and waited for a show I had been looking foreword to for a long time. The first band, Misery Signals, took a long time to get on stage and the show started about 45 minutes late I would guess, though I don’t wear a watch. I would find out it was well worth the wait. I had only briefly heard MS that day while I was looking up the other bands to see what I was getting into, and was pleasantly surprised. I am not a hardcore kid, and think that most hardcore is lacking in melody and songwriting skill, no matter how hard it is, or how fast the guitar players are. Misery Signals was probably the hardest band I’ve heard that kept a good sense of melody in their music. Not to mention they were the most precise live hardcore band I’ve ever heard. So that made a big difference and really got me pretty excited for the rest of the show. On top of that, they played a clean, two part guitar piece they wrote that was completely out of character, flawlessly executed, and beautiful.

After Misery Signals finished, Remembering Never was up. This band I had heard was the heaviest of the night, and I was kinda looking foreword to it after my last surprise. I was let down. Remembering Never is good at what they do, but is just not my kind of music. Too much chugging and low growls, and not enough songwriting. The lead singer had great stage presence though, and watching him rile up the masses of mascara’d, girl’s pants wearing boys to a flailing fury was pretty entertaining. Then he had to get up and ruin it by making some speech about how real he was, and how hardcore his band was and how they hate fame and just want to keep it real. All that may be true, but the phrase “keep it real” was used far too many times.

Remembering Never left the stage, and my excitement grew as Emery began to set up. Talk about a fish out of water, not only is Emery the only Christian band on the tour, but they are the softest of all the bands. The juxtaposition of screamo to the hardcore groups before made the difference in the genres more than clear. Emery took the stage, ran a quick sound check, and started without warning with “As Your Voice Fades”. For those who don’t know, this songs starts off with a solo voice, quietly lamenting behind a muffled organ sound, and bursts into a raging swirl of screams and hot guitars. This I got right into, and for the first time of the show, joined the center of the crowd, and lost all control of my body, as I was sucked into a sea of sweaty kids screaming every word back to the band. Emery was great, as I suspected they would be. They were not as razor sharp as Misery Signals, but definitely played well. Their frontman was not as influential as Remembering Never, but the whole band seemed more passionate about what they were doing. They played about 6 songs I would guess, as an opening band, and left me craving more. Leaving the stage, they thanked the crowd graciously and departed to mingle with their fans.

After their show, I had to go outside to get some air, and ended up talking to 3 of the band members, who couldn’t be nicer of more grateful that I had come to see them play. I thanked them for a great experience, and headed back up north to sleep and wait for the next time Emery rolls through town.

Highlights: Misery Signals playing “Worlds and Dreams”, Emery playing “Fractions”, and the security guy judging my friend by his age and giving us all a good laugh.

Reviewed by: Michael