Motionless In White + Beartooth Bring The Diseased & Disguised Tour to Revolution Live, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Fort Lauderdale, Florida (January 30, 2020) – It’s a beautiful evening in sunny Fort Lauderdale, FL and an absolutely huge line is snaking its way all around Revolution Live and its parking lot. What’s bringing out people in droves tonight is the Diseased and Disguised Tour, featuring Motionless In White and Beartooth. With the tour name coming from the names of both bands most recent releases, Beartooth’s Disease, and Motionless In White’s Disguise, this wasn’t going to be a regular tour, it was going to be a co-headlining one. So, all ego’s would have to be checked at the door.
With this being a co-headlining tour, both bands would take turns leading off the show. This being the last night of this highly successful tour, Beartooth would be getting first crack at entertaining the sold-out crowd. With bodies seemingly stuffed everywhere inside Revolution Live, all eyes were on the stage. With two risers out in front of the stage and an elevated walkway that held drummer Conner Denis’s kit, there were plenty of spots for the band to roam.
With the house lights completely out, heavy strobes at the back of the stage started going off. When lead singer Caleb Shomo and the gang hit the stage everyone was going nuts. From the moment they kicked the show off with “The Lines” you knew this was going to be one of those raucous, high-energy shows that sends you home buzzing from head to toe. Shomo yelled at the crowd “Ft. Lauderdale you crazy mother f*ckers!! It’s time to wake up! This is the last night of the tour. So, get on your feet and jump!!”. Between the audience jumping, as well as half the band the jumping, the atmosphere was pure electric!
Up next was one of Beartooth’s hit songs “Hated”. As the band started the song, Caleb yelled at the crowd to sing along. The packed house didn’t just respond, it overpowered him. With virtually everyone yelling at the top of their lungs “All alone in a wall-less prison”, even Caleb was surprised at how loud everyone belted that out. The rest of the band was on fire. With guitarist Kamron Bradbury and bassist Oshie Bichar playing next to each other and head-banging the whole way through.
As this was the last night of the tour, hijinks were a plenty. Things started almost immediately. From the looks of things guitarist Kamron Bradbury broke into Motionless In White guitarist Ryan Sitkowski’s dressing room and stole his outfit. Not only was he dressed identically, but he even copied his makeup. But the guys in Motionless In White wouldn’t sit idly by, they had something up their sleeves. They came out in the middle of one of their songs with a table and started playing beer pong. Amazingly enough Beartooth was able to keep on playing while not laughing.
One of the highlights of the set came after the performance of “Bad Listener”. With Shomo at first leading the just the audience in the opening of the song, once then band kicked in things went nuts. With the band jumping on stage and everyone following suit. People were crowd-surfing and the most fun kind of mayhem ensued. When the song ended and the band took a breather, drummer Conner Denis had the stage to himself. With that he pounded out a blazing drum solo that absolutely wowed the packed house. They capped off their scintillating set with “In Between”
After a quick changer over, it was now time for the round two of this action packed night featuring Motionless In White, the other co-headliner. Just like Beartooth, their stage setup used all the same risers and Vinny Mauro’s drum kit was set up on top. With five studio albums under their belt, including their latest white hot release, Disguise, as well as two EP’s, they had plenty of killer material to melt everyone’s face off.
As the band made its way onto the stage under a dark, eerie blue light, everyone in the place had their cell phones raised high to catch every second of the action. Like flipping a switch, they kicked into “Disguised” and all the strobes kicked in along with huge, lit up stylized letters M I W that is the logo for the band placed underneath the drum kit. With guitarists Ryan Sitkowski and Ricky Olson up on top of the riser on either side of drummer Mauro, and bassist Justin Morrow on a riser down front, everyone was head-banging and letting the hair fly, while Chris Motionless stalked the stage belting out the lyrics. What a powerful way to kick off their part of the show.
As they were getting ready to dive into “Necessary Evil”, Chris Motionless exhorted the audience to start jumping . As the band started playing, as if on cue, the entire place was a giant sea of bodies jumping. The spotlights on the stage behind the band even got in on the act. They were going up and down in sync with everyone. Chris Motionless had the perfect intro for the next song. He asked the audience “Do you want something heavy? Then we need you to bang your heads off your f*cking necks. We are Motionless In White and we send to you our Thoughts And Prayers”, and with that they played a killer version of the song that had everyone banging heads just like Chris asked them to.
Chris Motionless took some time out of the show to give thanks to all the bands that played with them on this run. He also talked about how great it was to be on this tour with everyone and there was no place in rock n roll for an ego. As this was the last night of the tour, he made sure to give a special shout out to all the crew members. After promising to shut up, Chris and the band went back to playing and launched into their newest hit song “Brand New Numb”. As with every song they had performed tonight, they sounded great. There was blazing guitar riffs throughout. The rhythm section was tight and driving. Of course, Chris’ voice was spot on, which is no mean feat considering this was the last night of an action-packed tour. But, they had one surprise left – as they were coming up on the last verse of the song, they brought out Shomo, the lead singer of Beartooth, to lend a hand singing the last part. What a thrill it was to see both singers on stage slaying this hit song.
What a successful night and tour this was. Both co-headlining bands, Beartooth and Motionless In White, absolutely blew out Revolution Live. Every fan that packed into see the show got far more than their money’s worth and streamed out of Revolution Live walking on cloud nine. As Chris Motionless said earlier in the evening “It’s amazing what can happen when friendship and love come together and everybody wants everyone to win, this is what happens here”. What happened was an incredible tour by two great bands, at the top of their game, giving their all every night.
Motionless In White:
Beartooth:
Revolution Live: