THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER w/ SUICIDE SILENCE | Opera House

WORDS BY: ALISON SEROUDE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: STEPHANIE TRAN

On October 6th, The Black Dahlia Murder, Suicide Silence and Chelsea Grin played at the Opera House in Toronto. Immediately walking into the venue, an instant wave of excitement hits you as every one waited to catch this line-up.

Suicide Silence took to the crowd with songs off their new album You Can’t Stop Me. This is Suicide Silence’s first album since the death of their former vocalist, Mitch Lucker, who died in a motorcycle accident in 2012. The crowd seemed to welcome the new vocalist, Eddie Hermida (ex-All Shall Perish), yet Mitch’s death definitely left a void that Hermida couldn’t fill. Thankfully for the chanting in “Wake Up“, Hermida was able to team one side of the crowd against the other, yelling “Wake up! Wake up!“.

The band started to feel the crowds excitement, particularly in “Fuck Everything“. During that songs performance the crowd and band seemed to connect the most and despite Lucker’s absence and of his classic ‘Lucker Stomp’, Hermida won the crowd over, and their approval, once they began to chant his name.

After Suicide Silence came the headliner: The Black Dahlia Murder. Following such a good performance from the co-headliner, The Black Dahlia Murder were going to have some competition. Starting off with “In Hell Is Where She Waits For Me“, the bands vocalist, Trevor Strnad, began waving his arms around and getting the crowd excited as well as delivering an exciting performance.

After a few songs the crowd was still as entranced by Strnads performance, with chants of ‘hey!’ from the crowd accompanying most songs. Although the crowd seemed to be quieting down (likely due to being so worked out over Suicide Silence’s set) Strnad and the rest of the band kept themselves engaged with the crowd, enough to joke around and apologize for the balcony not being open so the crowd couldn’t get farther away. The band does bring it back, with encouragement to come to the front of the stage just before they played “Into The Everblack“. Towards the end of the show what was asked of the crowd for the mother of all Canadian circle pits, was delivered and more-while finishing off the rest of the set with four more fan god favorite songs.

The fan voted songs really added a flare to the tour, making the crowd more excited than usual when their favorite band comes to town. The Black Dahlia Murder ended the night with “I Will Return“ and sent the crowd off on a high note… even despite the lack of an encore.