Threesome U.S. Tour 2019
Bring Me the Horizon, Sleeping With Sirens, Poppy
Arvest Bank Theater at the Midland
Kansas City, Missouri
October 22nd, 2019
I honestly had no idea what to expect from the Threesome Tour. I’d never seen Sleeping With Sirens, or Poppy before, and hadn’t even really checked out much of their music. I knew BMTH was going to put on a killer show, so I had already exceeded my already high expectations for the band before we even set off on the 3 hours drive to Kansas City.
My first time seeing Bring Me the Horizon was an interesting experience. The band has played the main stage at Northern Invasion 2016 during their That’s The Spirit tour. The festival that year was tongue-in-cheek dubbed the European Invasion festival because of the inclusion of international bands like Avatar, Asking Alexandria, Ghost, Enter Shakari, Babymetal, and Parkway Drive. It was an incredibly intense 2 day festival, and by the time Bring Me the Horizon took the stage on the second day, I was a bit exhausted and didn’t give the band as much attention as they deserved. Yeah, it was a loud performance and the crowd was really into it, but it didn’t grab my full attention and I chalked them up to being another that just wasn’t meant for me. In fact, I’d kinda written them off until I heard Mantra. I regret not giving BMTH more of my attention after discovering them.
They’d not played my adopted city of Omaha, Nebraska since 2009’s Taste of Chaos tour, and I already missed out on seeing the First Love World Tour, and the Second Base tour. Being this late into 2019, the Threesome Tour was probably going to be my last chance to see the band for a good long while.
With the initial announcement of the tour, I had plenty of time to familiarize myself with Poppy, and Sleeping With Sirens.
I was a bit hesitant about what I should expect from Poppy’s performance. Her musical style seemed to be bouncing all over the place, moving from heavy metal to EDM to pop all within the same song. I really wanted to go into this concert blind so I avoided the setlist spoilers and live photos from previous shows of the tour. Tonight’s show would be Poppy’s first in Kansas City, and the fans on the rail seemed stoked.
The Arvest Theater’s lights dimmed, and the air raid sirens started. One by one, Poppy’s band walked on stage, each of them wearing a full pleather gimp suite and emotionless sex doll style face masks and long blond wigs. The visual was both alluring and pretty fucking creepy. I approved of the message Poppy was delivering with her band looking identical and “generic”. Poppy took the stage show a step further by wearing a black jumpsuit covered straight jacket buckle straps. Before the first chord was even played, I knew this was going to be a wicked stage show.
Poppy’s seven song opening set was loud, heavy, and energetic. While still relatively new to the world of touring, Poppy has earned a distinct following with her unique style of music. Collaborating with Grimes, and Fever 333 has given her music a polished rough edge that most up and coming musicians lack.
Poppy took the opportunity of the Threesome Tour to live debut 2 new songs, Bite Your Teeth, and Blood Money. Its possible that these two tracks could be featured on her upcoming I Disagree release, her first on Sumerian Records.
You can give me a hard time for now being a fan of Poppy, but this girl has talent. She’s filled a niche that has been void since Sister Soleil retired, and gives the female side of the rock/metal genres an additional push since The Birthday Massacre are on hiatus. Tonight might have been my introduction to Poppy but hopefully it will not be my the last time seeing her.
Poppy’s setlist:
Concrete, Play Destroy, X, Scary Mask, Bite Your Teeth, Blood Money, I Disagree
By the time Sleeping With Sirens took the stage, the general admission floor was packed. Standing outside before the band’s set, they were all anyone was taking about. Tonight would be first time seeing the band live, but I spoke with several fans who had previously seen the band a dozen or more times. Even though the band has been touring the world for almost a decade, they seem prefer the coasts, and cruise through the Midwest when time allows them.
For almost an hour, the band smashed through a blistering ten song set. While there was a bit of bouncing and thrashing during Poppy’s set, the moshing started nearly as soon as Sleeping With Sirens hit the stage. Their set was heavy with tracks from the most recent release, How It Feels To Be Lost, mixed perfectly with fan favorites from their previous releases.
Sleeping With Sirens setlist:
Leave It All Behind, Never Enough, Tally It Up: Settle the Score, Blood Lines, Medicine (Devil in My Head), Break Me Down, Agree to Disagree, How It Feels To Be Lost, Kick Me, If You Can’t Hang
The crowd looked visibly worn out after thrashing around with Sleeping With Sirens, but there was a enough of an intermission before Bring Me the Horizon’s set to take a break and recuperate.
The crowd erupted into deafening screams the moment the lights went off. There were audible gasps as the giant LCD screen burst on and played the “Welcome to Mantra” video.
From the opening chord of “Mantra”, Bring Me the Horizon hit the ground running. We were already halfway through the Threesome tour, their 77th performance of 2019, and the band looked to be still having a blast touring.
Tonight’s show would be the second time the band played “In the Dark”, their latest single, and Oli apologized “if it sounds like shit”. It didn’t. While I really wanted to hear “Sugar Honey Ice & Tea”, “In the Dark” sounded amazing live, and it was really cool that our show was one of only three times the band played it on this tour.
Even though tonight was only my second time seeing the band live, their performance was spot on. Their energy was spot on, and they hit every note with a sledgehammer. Technically speaking, having a minimal rotating set for the Threesome Tour gave the guys a chance to incorporate a semi-choreographed live stage and video/light show while still managing the give them the opportunity to be spontaneous. It really was an incredible audio/visual experience. The trippy, psychedelic videos during Medicine, and Mother Tongue, the wolves stalking during The House of Wolves, and the ever popular sing-along for Happy Song. They really put an amazing amount of effort into their stage show and pulled it off with a hitch.
It wasn’t all headbanging and moshing though. You could tell the guys were genuinely having fun with tonight’s set. Oli bounced into the crowd several times. Keyboardist/Percussionist Jordan Fish might have been trapped behind his kit, but that didn’t keep him from thrashing about and tossing a few drumsticks into the crowd. While bassist Matt Keen paced the stage and upper walkway, guitarist Lee Malia was back and forth all night, toying with the crowd. Drummer Mat Nicholls was truly a behemoth behind his kit. The energetic award for the night goes to touring guitarist John Jones, though. Twirling and spinning for most of the set, I’m shocked that this dude hasn’t smacked anyone in the head with his guitar yet. He did joke after the show that “one of these days I will”.
Bring Me the Horizon setlist:
Welcome to MANTRA, MANTRA, Avalanche, The House of Wolves, Medicine, Wonderful Life, Shadow Moses (with The Best Is Yet to Come intro), Mother Tongue, Happy Song, In the Dark, Antivist, Nihilist Blues, Can You Feel My Heart, Follow You
Encore: Throne, Drown
