Messed!Up
For more than two decades, August Burns Red have been proving that metalcore can be both brutally heavy and ridiculously ambitious. Formed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 2003, the five-piece have built a reputation on precision riffing, throat-shredding vocals, breakdowns that hit like a wrecking ball and a willingness to push their sound beyond genre boundaries.
Albums such as Constellations (2009) and Leveler (2011) established August Burns Red as major players in the modern metalcore scene, while later releases including Rescue & Restore (2013), Found in Far Away Places (2015) and Phantom Anthem (2017) showed a band refusing to stand still. Their technical musicianship and increasingly adventurous songwriting have earned them two Grammy nominations for Best Metal Performance – for ‘Identity’ and ‘Invisible Enemy’ – while their live reputation has seen them share stages with everyone from Bullet For My Valentine to A Day To Remember.
Now they’re preparing to unleash their tenth studio album, Season Of Surrender, and they’re taking it straight to the other side of the world. Their upcoming Australia and New Zealand tour marks their first Australian headline run in seven years and, crucially, will be the first place in the world where the band celebrates the new album live. The Australian dates run from Fremantle on September 27 through to Brisbane on October 4, before the tour heads across the Tasman for two New Zealand dates.
And then comes Auckland. On October 8, they will hit Powerstation for their first New Zealand shows in a decade. Joining them will be Crooked Royals and As Colour Fades, promising a suitably heavy homegrown support bill. After ten years away, the return is more than a routine tour stop: it’s a full-throttle introduction to the next chapter of one of metalcore’s most enduring bands.
