Wage War Brought the Heavy Artillery Thursday at Red Flag in Saint Louis

Sean Derrick May 15, 2022May 15, 2022 0 Comments Red Flag, Saint Louis concert review and photos, St. Louis, Wage War, While She Sleeps

–by Greg Artime

It was metalcore band Wage War’s first foray into the new venue in St. Louis known as Red Flag on Thursday. So, they brought out their heavy artillery to try to shake the walls down. Mercifully, the venue passed the test.

Security had a busy night as there was a steady stream of crowd surfers for both Wage War as well as While She Sleeps, who encouraged the action a bit by asking several times how many there could be during their set.

While She Sleeps performing at Red Flag in St. Louis Thursday. Photos by Greg Artime.

While She Sleeps started their set with the title track from their latest album Sleeps Society, and continued to tear into a blistering set that included the debut of a new song, “Eye to Eye”. vocalist Lawrence Taylor was all over the stage and even off as at one point he even jumped into the crowd from the balcony, then crowd surfed back to the stage.

Wage War had a more typical metalesque stage presence with a massive amount of hair whipping and smoke for effect while interacting with the crowd dedicating songs to “the Nashville boys in Chamber” and “the Boys in Gideon”, who opened the night, before vocalist Briton Bond asked the crowd if they could slow things down a bit with “Me Against Myself”.

With lots of red, green, and blue lights coupled with lots and lots of smoke the set seemed almost cryptic and bombastic, which was the effect they were going after. The band is touring in support of their latest album MANIC, which saw the brunt of the playlist with seven songs included.

The crowd certainly loved it, especially one particular fellow who during the last song, “Stitch” climbed a pole high above the crowd and stayed there, shaking his fist and bouncing around.

Hey, a good show will make you do some crazy things.