Friday night was unusually cloudy for Orange County. Amidst the overcast weather, a modest crowd populated Anaheim's Chain Reaction as a short green bus sat parked out front. In the driver's seat sat Thomas Dutton, vocalist, guitarist and the sole creative member of Seattle's Forgive Durden.
Mock Playbills floated around, passed hand-to-hand, advertising "Razia's Shadow: A Musical", their front pages bearing the cover art of Forgive Durden's latest release, a full-on musical inspired by films like "Moulin Rouge!" and "Aladdin", featuring guest appearances from members of some of today's most popular acts, including Brendon Urie of Panic at the Disco and Say Anything's Max Bemis.
Beginning with April's Bamboozle Left in Irvine, CA, Dutton and a group of touring musicians have been performing "Razia's Shadow" in its entirety, an idea continued on this tour.
Kicking off the night was The Sequence, a four-piece powerpop outfit out of Cypress, CA. After tracks like "Out in California" had a startling amount of concertgoers singing and clapping along, vocalist Travis Van Hoff spoke with the audience.
"Since everyone else is doing covers, we figured we would as well," said a sweaty Van Hoff before the band delved into a guitar-heavy version of Rihanna's "Disturbia", a song recently covered by The Cab for Fearless Records' "Punk Goes Pop, Vol. 2".
In between bands, restless fans heckled sound engineers.
"Hey sound guy! I like the way you carry those wires!" yelled a female in attendance, met only with a shy grin from the dreadlocked sound guy in question.
Once the brief respite was over with, La Habra's Close But Not Quite hit the stage, fronted by the boyish, yet undoubtedly well-received Wes Smith. Offering a style of pop-rock infused with often hip-hop inspired vocals, the band will draw countless comparisons to "emo hip-hop" act Gym Class Heroes. Smith shares GCH frontman Travis McCoy's appeal to the female demographic, as one point in the set saw a neon pink bra tossed up on stage, which Smith promptly hung around his neck for the next song.
After several songs from their upcoming EP, "Who Said the West Was Dead?", Close But Not Quite said goodbye to the fans, throwing up their signature hand signal (touching the fingers and thumbs of each hand together to create a heart) for the crowd to reciprocate.
Next up was Arizona pop-rockers Anarbor, receiving arguably one of the loudest receptions of the night.
"We haven't been to California in forever!" said an excited Slade Echeverria, vocalist and bassist for the group. Having enjoyed success on the stages of both Sub City's Take Action Tour as well as Bamboozle Left, it's no surprise that Anarbor has secured a spot on the 15th Annual Vans Warped Tour this summer.
After rounding out their set with crowd favorites like "The Brightest Green" and "Let the Games Begin", Anarbor handed the stage over to You, Me, and Everyone We Know out of Washington, D.C. The quartet wasted no time in getting the crowd on their feet, with frontman Ben Liebsch sweating buckets under the hot stage lights.
"You've got to give me a second to breathe," said an exhausted Liebsch. "Not only am I wearing a polyester shirt, but this is southern California, and this may have been a cool day for you, but fuck you, I'm from Baltimore, where it's shitty all the time."
Despite the tiresome nature of playing for a half-hour underneath those lights, Liebsch and company nonetheless delivered a stellar set, wowing the increasingly smaller crowd with upbeat numbers like "Carolina Heat" before turning the stage over to the night's headliners.
Another half-hour later, at 10 p.m. on the dot, Thomas Dutton and his bandmates in Forgive Durden hit the stage to the tune of "Genesis", the opening track from "Razia's Shadow" that normally features Casey Crescenzo of The Dear Hunter.
For the next hour, the band played "Razia's Shadow" from beginning to end, with their recent tourmates filling in for the guest vocalists that couldn't appear; Ben of You, Me, and Everyone We Know took on the role of Barayas the Spider, usually filled by Max Bemis, while Slade from Anarbor filled in for Nic Newsham of Gatsby's American Dream, singing as King Malka on "Meet the King".
The set had a distinctly epic feel, from "Genesis" all the way to the final song, "The End and the Beginning", which saw nearly all members of Anarbor and You, Me, and Everyone We Know rushing the stage to join in the chorus.
"So this is my cue of where to leave you," boomed the recorded voice of the narrator, Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou, over the P.A., preaching the unspeakably optimistic message of "Razia's Shadow" to the elated crowd exiting the Chain Reaction.
"So remember, never surrender. Because the unrelenting constancy of love and hope will rescue and restore you from any scope."
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