Recensione Show Syracuse, 15-05-2014

Controlled chaos.

That's the best way to describe the mania of the Avenged Sevenfold concert at the War Memorial Thursday night. And the band's front man, M. Shadows, thrived on every second of it.

"You know what I like about this city?" he said early on in the night. "They like to push and shove and [mosh] pit. So let's give them something to pit to."

You could almost hear the security guards' collective groan. But the yellow-shirted staff proved pros at keeping the peace while letting the revelers rage. They safely escorted crowd surfers to their feet and did their best to chorale mosh pits. They tossed out the few brawlers in the masses and shared water with those who looked like they needed it.

The crowd, meanwhile, seemed constantly on the verge of erupting into a frenzy. Several thousand fans on the floor surged with adrenaline and aggression. They teemed with testosterone and Avenged provided the music to match.

At one point, however, the mayhem proved too much even for Shadows, the man stoking the fire.

"This isn't cool," he admonished. "No fighting. No punches. We're family. Take care of each other."

Despite some bloodied faces and several unruly concertgoers bent on swinging at their neighbors, however, the show was an aggressively peaceful affair. Teens and twenty-somethings let their testosterone flow and their limbs flail and Avenged gave them every reason to keep going.

The band stormed through 90 minutes of shredding guitar and machine gun drumming beneath Shadows' growling and searing vocals.

The troupe of five took to the spartan stage -- devoid of any amps, stacks or speakers -- at 9 p.m. and launched immediately into "Shepherd of Fire," the lead song off their latest album, "Hail To The King."

The 2013 album is the basis of the band's current tour and, thus, featured prominently in the show with numbers like the namesake "Shepherd" and "This Means War." When they got to the album's title track, a massive skeleton king emerged from the backdrop atop a throne of skulls. The crowd roared.

Among "King" songs the band reached back into its catalog with favorites like "Bat Country" and lesser-played tunes like "Burn It Down," both from 2005's "City Of Evil."

They took a break from the fiery, charged tracks when Shadows paused for a moment to pay tribute to James "The Rev" Sullivan, one of the band's founding members who died in 2009. They played "Fiction," featuring recorded vocals from The Rev.

Midway through the show, Shadows made a point to acknowledge the lack of pyrotechnics in an otherwise production-heavy show.

"I find it ironic that this is the one show in America where they wouldn't let us use our pyro and the emergency fire lights go on," Shadows said. "They should have just let us blow the place up."

But fire or no fire, the arena seethed sweat and steam as the band provided the soundtrack for an unleashing of inhibitions.

It was controlled chaos. And Avenged Sevenfold was behind the wheel the entire time.