Scary Kids Scaring Kids

The fact that any band describes themself as being ‘post’ a certain genre - in the case of Scary Kids Scaring Kids, it’s post-hardcore - is an interesting enough quirk in itself, but it’s interesting to see how the Arizona outfit took that to an almost cartoonish extreme - even their band name was a cue taken from one of their influences, with Scary Kids Scaring Kids being the name of a Cap’n Jazz song, too. Over the course of an eight year career, Scary Kids Scaring Kids released two well-received full-lengths, The City Sleeps in Flames in 2005 and a self-titled follow-up in 2007, but it’s really their utterly raucous live shows that they’re best remembered for now; their blend of electronic and typical guitar sounds on tracks like ‘Degenerates’ made for a furious blend, with frontman Tyson Stevens eschewing the trend to aim for metalcore vocals by combining singing and screaming and instead just aiming for the latter, delivering his lyrics in delightfully unrefined fashion. After releasing a statement to fans in 2009 to tell them that they’d grown apart as people and wanted to disband, the group embarked on one final tour of the United States in an attempt to preserve their achievements; the sell-outs and the sheer feverishness of their fanbase stands as testament to the fact that they did indeed achieve that preservation.

American post-hardcore band hailing from Arizona, walk onto the stage to the sound of epic music, creating am unsettling but exciting atmosphere. Almost like the Tyrannosaur paddock in Jurassic Park, you feel as though something wild is about to happen, you’re just not quite sure what. This is one of those moments. The 500 capacity venue that they have sold out this evening is absolutely jam packed and the audience are like sardines, but it hasn’t killed the excitement as Tyson Stevens walks onstage greeted by huge amounts of applause and they launch into set list made up of various tracks from their full length albums, “The City Sleeps in Flames” and their self titled album which was released two years later. They tackled their song “Faces” alongside huge amounts of the audience singing along it is a fantastic atmosphere. There audience made up of fans that have been there since the start. Drummer, James Ethridge performs drum fills that sound like machine drum blasts and the guitarists Steve Kirbuy and Chad Crawford execute guitar riffs played in harmony, with perfect precision. One of the features of this band that sets them apart from the rest is their virtuosic keyboard player Pouyan Afkary who plays keyboard with such flare.