Canadian metal band Spiritbox brought their latest tour to Dublin’s Academy this past Monday and the only word to describe it is massive. From Courtney LaPlante’s unbelievable vocals, to Mike LaPlantes and Josh Gilbert’s mega guitar and bass riffs to Zev Rose’s explosive drumming every thing about this band screams metal and is ready to explode onto bigger stages.
The band opened with ‘Rule of Nines’ and emerged from the darkness in a splash of backlighting amongst the outragous riffs and Courtney’s roaring screams. Upon seeing the crowd erupted into cheers and immediately got to the task at hand, headbang as much as possible.
Josh Gilbert’s clean vocals complimented Courtney’s cleans really well and this was evident in ‘Hurt You’ and ‘Yellowjacket’, while his bass riffs cut through the mix well and could be felt in your chest.
The band then played ‘The Void’ their latest single off theor upcoming project. This song translated really well showing a great contrast between clean vocals and deafening riffs. I really enjoyed ths song a lot live, possibly even more than the recorded track. ‘Circle With Me’, one of the bands more well known songs was next and upon hearing the introduction the 1000 strong crowd broke into a mosh pit.
‘Rotoscope’ and ‘Secret Garden’ offered a nice break for Courtney with her really showing off her clean vocals with huge belts on each of the choruses of ‘Rotoscope’ with the band showing a slightly softer side before the band got to resume showcasig their heavy side during ‘Secret Garden’.
The biggest suprise on the night was the massive song that is ‘Silk in The Strings’, with heavy riffs and fantastic distorted vocals this song is a metalhead’s dream and once again caused mosh pits in the crowd.
‘The Mara Effect part 3’ was in similar vain with much cleaner vocals and a bit of a slower pace than the other songs the band played up to this point until the end of the song where Courtney once again resumed screaming before slowing down again to finish the song.
‘Holy Roller’ was next up. This was the song that got me personally into Spiritbox and absolutely did not disappoint on night with the crowd rocking out hard to it, before the band left the riffs behind for the last two songs ‘Constance’ and ‘Eternal Blue’ which was actually a nice way to end the show and showed the versitility of the band.
Overall, Spiritbox put on one hell of a show and I’d see them again in a heartbeat. By far the best Metal act I have seen live! Do yourself a favour and check them out!
