The Devil Wears Prada, As I Lay Dying’s ‘Marathon Metalcore’ to hit Buffalo

blog by Ben Kirst • March 12, 2013 @ 11:56am

It won’t be a show for the faint of heart, but at the same time, the atmosphere will be a lot more family-friendly than one may expect.

After Dark Entertainment and Buffalo.com are proud to present the Marathon Metalcore tour at 6 p.m. on Friday, March 22 at Town Ballroom (681 Main St., Buffalo), a relentless double bill featuring The Devil Wears Prada and As I Lay Dying. Tickets are available online now. For Today and The Chariot will also perform.

The Devil Wears Prada are a Christian metalcore band from Dayton, Ohio whose last two studio records—2009’s With Roots Above and Branches Below and 2011’s Dead Throne—crossed over to the mainstream by tracking as high as 11th and 10th on the Billboard 200, respectively. Both albums went to number one on Billboard’s U.S. indie chart.

The band is serious about its faith—although The Devil Wears Prada kicks up a holy racket onstage, the message matters as much as the music. Vocalist Mike Hranica recently told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the goal was to change behavior, metal kid by metal kid:

Regardless of whether people come away from our show saying ‘I want to find a church’ or ‘I’m going to go home and read my Bible,’ I think that if you’re going home encouraged to do something better or to be a little bit more generous, that’s what I want people to take away from it…I think people take something from our shows that’s not just, ‘We went there and screamed and drank a few beers and banged our heads’ and that’s that.

The band has been going through some ups and downs recently. After announcing their signing with longtime metal stalwart Roadrunner Records on Feb. 19, The Devil Wears Prada almost immediately found themselves looking for a new guitarist when band member Chris Rubey opted to sit out the tour with As I Lay Dying to concentrate on his newborn son (pretty legitimate reason). Samuel Penner of For Today—another Christian-influenced metalcore outfit—will step in for the road trip.

The Devil Wears Prada has also been working out a couple new songs on tour—keep your ears open for a new grinder entitled ‘Gloom.’

As I Lay Dying also carries the cross, so to speak, as a Christian metalcore band. The San Diego five-piece and 2012 Loudwire Metal Band of the Year recently released a new video, ‘No Lungs To Breathe,’ directed by guitarist Nick Hipa.