Pierce The Veil’s long awaited release of their album, Misadventures, was greeted with some apprehension. I had not really listened to them for the past three or four years, but I had some friends who were very excited for this album, as it had been two years since their last release. As soon as I found out that they were coming to the Pageant here in St. Louis for their “Made to Destroy” tour, my friend and I bought tickets. I then realized I had not listened to the album in it’s entirety, only hearing two or three songs before getting distracted by something in my suggestions, so I sat down and made myself listen to it completely. I realized, listening to the album, why people were nervous at first. The album is somewhat of a departure from their usual style of screaming and relatively high pitched vocals. It has more ‘clean’ (non screaming) vocals, and while there was still some of their typical style on the album, the majority of it is different from what they are known for.

At the concert, the place was packed. In the floor area, there was barely enough room for a mosh pit. The opener, I Prevail, was the lesser known group who played. They played a couple songs, including a cover of ‘Blank Space’ by Taylor Swift. The second opener, Neck Deep, was more well known, and their set was pretty amazing (in my opinion). They played more songs than I Prevail, and they played my personal favorite songs of theirs, ‘Gold Steps’ and ‘December (Again)’. On to the main event of the night, Pierce The Veil. They took half an hour to set up the stage, during which a banner was dropped to hang from the ceiling with their logo projected onto it. When the setup was done, there was a short animation projected onto the banner. The animation was of a rocket ship flying through the sky and crash landing in America, specifically St. Louis. After the short animation, the banner fell to the ground to reveal the set of a crashed rocket, and, while some white noise and muffled voices played, the band members climbed out of the two holes in the ship two at a time. It was after this that they began playing their music. They played a few songs, then Vic Fuentes (the lead singer) gave a small speech about how there’s no real point where you are a ‘grownup’, so you should start working towards your dreams and goals now, then introduced their song ‘The Divine Zero’. About halfway through the set, the background banner displaying the cover of Misadventures, dropped to reveal a banner with the cover of the album released before Misadventures, Collide with the Sky. A little bit after that, they asked for an audience volunteer, pulled her on stage, and sang part of the song ‘Bulletproof Love’ to her. She cried. They then switched to acoustic everything and told the story behind the song ‘Kissing in Cars’ before playing it. The song was written for a friend’s wedding, inspired by the friend’s writing about his fiancee. After the show ended, the whole room was shouting for ‘one more song’ and the band’s initials. When they came out to play the encore, the room almost shook due to the screams and applause. They played their two most popular songs, ‘Circles’ from the album Misadventures, the first song they had on the radio, and ‘King For A Day’ from the album Collide with the Sky, which originally featured Kellin Quinn of Sleeping With Sirens, but for this concert, they had the screamer from the first opener, I Prevail, perform it with them. All in all, I had an amazing time that made my middle school self’s year.