So Much For (Tour) Dust-W/ Fall Out Boy, Bring Me the Horizon, Royal & The Serpent, and Games We Play
When I heard that Fall Out Boy was set to hit the road this summer with Bring Me The Horizon, I knew that this was going to be a show that I could not miss. Both bands have help shape my music taste today. What better way to spend a Friday night than to see two awesome bands perform together. For this particular date of the tour, the band is also playing with Royal & The Serpent and Games We Play. Upon arrival to the venue the traffic leading up was at a standstill for at least a mile. Unfortunately, due to the time it took to get into the venue I was unable to capture photos of Games We Play even though we arrived early to the venue.
Games We Play is a pop punk trio that when viral overnight, after posing a teaser of their new song “Deadbeat” on Tik Tok. The video of the singer and his wife, has over a million views. If you are a fan of bands like All Time Low, Real Friends and State Champs, then you will definitely want to add Games We Play to your list of up-and-coming artists to listen to. Games We Play is the first band to step foot on stage for the night. They expressed their excitement for being on tour with Fall Out Boy. They played a few songs and to bring some energy to the crowd they played a cover of “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. Another cool thing I noticed about this band, the singer Emmyn, joined us in the photo pit to take photos of Royal & The Serpent’s Set.
Royal & The Serpent, also known as Ryan Santiago, is a singer song writer from New Jersey. She independently debuted her first single “Temperance” back in 2017. In an interview with Prelude Press she explains what the name Royal & The Serpent means, it translates to Me + My Ego also explaining that “Duality is the essence of our human experience.” In 2019 Royal & The Serpent was signed with Atlantic Records. She has 3 EP’s and a bunch of singles that has been released to date. After the release of her 3rd EP, IF I DIED WOULD ANYONE CARE she got the opportunity to go out on the road with Demi Lovato on her Holy Fvck Tour. I was not expecting to actually leave this show finding another artist that I enjoy listening too. When the other photographers & I were hanging out in the VIP area before Bring Me The Horizon came out, we heard a song that sounded familiar. It’s called “Overwhelmed”, I have heard it plenty of times at shows and in some Tik Tok videos, but I did not expect it to actually be a Royal & The Serpent song. Royal & The Serpent are for sure a band I will be adding to my must listen to list.
Bring Me The Horizon is a British Rock band from Sheffield forming back in 2006. The band has 8 albums released to date. The band has such a large variety of musical stylings, due to the idea of each album that they released should be different from the last, they have experimented with mixing electronica, nu metal, pop and rock trying to get away from the metalcore sound from earlier albums. The band has collaborated with artist’s that I wouldn’t expect them to work with such as Halsey, Lil Uzi Vert, and Ed Sheeran. No matter what album you are listening to, I feel like Bring Me The Horizon has a song for everyone. I’ve listened to them since I was an early teenager and even now, I can still enjoy the new music they are producing. When Bring Me The Horizon finally graced us with their presence, I got super excited and was ready for what they were going to play for us that night. They played a bunch of fan favorites such as “Can You Feel My Heart", “Throne”, and “Happy Song.” There were fans there from all over, I was looking at some of the signs the fans had drew and one of them asked Oli Sykes to draw her next Bring Me The Horizon tattoo, which I thought was an awesome idea especially if you are a super fan. During their set Oli wanted the fans to step it up a notch and he kept asking them to mosh because the first two mosh pits were “sh*t.” I absolutely loved their set, since I was able to hear all my favorite songs by them and even see them for the first time live on top of being able to take photos of them was unimaginable.
Fall Out Boy is an American Rock band from Chicago Illinois, they formed back in 2001. Fall Out Boy was one of the main bands that introduced me to Pop-Rock and Pop-Punk with their catchy songs such as “Thnks fr th Mmrs” and “Sugar, We’re Going Down.” This band has had a variety of accomplishments in their career, they have won many awards such as artist of the year, multiple best music video awards, favorite alternative band and many more. Before Fall Out Boy even had the chance to step out on stage the fans at the barricades were going crazy. When the curtains were going up, I was not expecting what happened next, I jumped a little bit each time this happened. Fall Out Boy came out blasting, the band had fireworks going off and fire going off at all the high points of the songs. I loved the energy that they had to give, the singer Patrick Stump, was swinging his guitar around and hitting all those notes hard. I loved the fact that Pete Wenz had a flame thrower attached to his guitar. As we were leaving the pit, I noticed that a fan was waving around a sign that said, “I came here from London to make sure that this tour was real”. I loved that this tour had fans coming from all over the country to see them let alone coming from another country.
