The Poisoned Ascendancy Tour at The Pearl

Poisoned Ascendancy Tour
Thursday, April 10th, 2025
Pearl Concert Theater at The Palms
Las Vegas, Nevada

This is going to be an incredibly busy weekend so I can’t go into as much detail as I’d like – but don’t worry. There is still plenty I have to say about the Poisoned Ascendancy Tour. 

I don’t know either Sylosis or the following band well enough to go very in depth, however Sylosis is a band I really need to spend more time listening to. They formed in 2000 and released their first full-length album in 2008 so I really should have been a fan of theirs around this time. Their melodic take on thrash and death metal would have been an easy selling point for me in my high school years.  In preparation for this show I’ve been listening more to Sylosis recently than any other time in my life and really enjoying myself. Also, I had this strange dream of beating the shit out of my younger self and bullying him into listening to more Sylosis. 

That’s not to say I was ever unaware of Sylosis though. I wasted a lot of my time watching rig rundowns either on Guitar World’s website and later on YouTube in my teenage years. However I credit Josh Middleton for the single most useful advice on metal guitar tone I’ve ever heard. Period.

Countless videos showing off custom guitars, full stack amps and rack units I’ve never once even seen in a guitar store and it was Middleton who I first saw in a video actually explain why nearly every metal guitarist I knew used an overdrive pedal in front of a high gain amp and how they use it. 

Anyway take my own advice and go listen to Sylosis before I give myself an aneurism.

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Next up is one of Courtney’s favorite bands, August Burns Red. They’re a metalcore band that makes heavy use of the open string chugging breakdown trip that I find so creatively lazy that I often immediately look for something else to listen to as soon as I hear it. However they are otherwise a great example of the genre. If you’re a fan of metalcore and somehow not aware of August Burns Red there’s been a major fuck up somewhere and you need to go fix that shit. 

Setting aside my disdain for breakdowns for a moment, I do find many of their guitar melodies to be interesting whenever Courtney has put them on in the past and I do find vocalist Jake Luhrs in particular to be a talented performer. 

I won’t be seen in an August Burns Red band tee at any future shows however. Courtney might, sure, but metalcore has never been a genre of music I’ve been heavily invested in and with recent events in mind I’ve seemingly reverted back to hearing my inner voice uncontrollably gag at the sight of the phrase ‘Christian Themes’ when researching bands. 

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Trivium is easily the band I was most looking forward to. I’ve admittedly been late to checking out their newest releases when they debut. There’s really only so many hours in a day and aside from that, ‘Vengeance Falls’ really killed off much of my enthusiasm for the band unfortunately. 

However, to get to the actual point – one half the namesake of this tour and Trivium’s second full-length 2005’s ‘Ascendancy’ remains one of my favorite records of all time. That’s no exaggeration or hyperbole. It’s one of my all-time favorites. 

I first heard Trivium on a random edition of Headbanger’s Ball with the music video of “Like Light to the Flies” which was not the recording to feature on the album but was released on the show’s second compilation disk while the band’s lineup was in flux. The song even had yet another version included in the Sims 2 that is a must listen and I’m honestly amazed by any recording artist who has managed to re-record their vocals in Simmish. 

I believe the next time I’d see anything Trivium related would be either the music video for “Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr” which sold me on buying the album or a guitar magazine article where I learned that front man Matthew Heafy was still a goddamn teenager and I would thereby put some unrealistic expectations on my own guitar playing for quite some time. 

What really clinched things for me and made me a lifelong fan of this album was continuous listening to banger after banger and being amazed that such a heavy record could have such intricate melodies just thrown in and driving much of the songs forward. 

The plethora of singles from this record are all killer and no filler but two of my favorites “Drown and Torn Asunder” and the title track feature guitar parts that I hold as a grade A, 24 karat gold standard for melodic guitar riffs and lead lines. Crazily enough I can’t remember an instance of so much as seeing a video lesson or live performance of “Ascendancy” to know that my favorite motif from that song ends on a tapped note. Probably should have watched more of Matt’s live stream content to learn that part myself. 

Anyway – I’ve made it clear this was the highlight of the evening for me. The only thing I have to critique is I wish they hadn’t ended with “In Waves”. I get it – it’s a crowd pleaser and the song they like to send the fans home happy. I like the song. However there was a special edition of ‘Ascendancy’ that featured bonus tracks. 

There was the “Dying In Your Arms” radio edit I feel shouldn’t have ever existed but also a cover of “Master of Puppets” from the Kerrang! Magazine tribute compilation and the track “Washing Me Away in the Tides” that I only know to have come out of the Underworld II soundtrack. Either song would have been an incredible addition to the evening and fit comfortably into the theme. 

Regardless this feels like a birthday gift or Father’s Day since it’s so much closer. On a completely unrelated note I really love that Orange edition of the ‘Ascendancy’ vinyl release. (Hint hint. Wink wink.)

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For the final act of the evening Bullet For My Valentine would perform their first full length ‘The Poison’ from start to finish and started off with a compilation of press videos and sound clips from that era as well as showing off the screens to enhance their live show in sync with the song being played. Very different from the inflatable mascot Trivium had for a good two thirds of their set. Very Iron Maiden of Trivium to do that and it’s also something I appreciated about the Kreator show I attended not too long ago. 

The setup does set Bullet For My Valentine apart from even the co-headliner and I don’t know if I really love it for that reason but I do appreciate when metal bands bring something out on tour with them to enhance the performance be that big or small. 

This may come as a surprise to some people but I am a fan of this album. It may not be to the level of Trivium’s effort in my esteem but ‘The Poison’ was a release I was able to get behind at the time. It was nice to listen to a record that had some mainstream appeal for sure but with great songs that were dual guitar driven. They might have been lumped into metalcore by metal fans  or called screamo by the dumbasses that called everything from the Used to Cannibal Corpse screamo but I saw them as a band that proudly showed off their influences like Metallica and Iron Maiden proudly. 

I frankly didn’t care about the name of the band or the lyrical content about failed relationships but I loved the guitar parts enough that I didn’t really give a fuck about their image or anything outside the songs. 

I was initially surprised that they threw “Hand of Blood” onto the set list which inspired a bit of research where I learned there was a special edition that included that song on the album. I also learned that ‘The Poison’ was released months before in the United Kingdom than the Valentine’s Day release we got in North America. Memorable for the fact I walked to Tower Records after school for the second Tuesday in a row to pick up an anticipated album on release date. The previous week being In Flames’ 2006 release ‘Come Clarity’. 

I may have fallen off from being a fan with Bullet’s later material much sooner than with Trivium but I still do appreciate that this tour exists and that I was able to be there for both of them to perform such an important part of my teenage self’s musical journey live and in full. 

If you haven’t already seen the Poisoned Ascendancy show on this world tour do check out the remaining North American dates before this leg is up and we put 2005 behind us once more to deal with motherfucking 2025 again.  

PHOTO CREDIT: Live photos by Courtney Ware for ZRockR Magazine – (c) 2025 – All Rights Reserved.