The Rockstar Energy Disrupt Festival @ RBC Echo Beach - Toronto, ON, Canada

The Rockstar Energy Disrupt Festival is the first-ever music festival that is very prevalent in North America and it showcases a variety of pop-punk, punk, and emo-based bands that come to each city and perform their greatest hits, as well as recently released music. This festival is bringing a new music festival experience for each tour date, and fans will be immersed into a full-day interactive experience by having much exposure to various lifestyle brands, pop-up activations, hearing one’s favourite band, and so on. What sets this festival different than the other ones is that only one band performs at a set time, in order to avoid conflicting set times and allowing fans to experience the full lineup in one rock-filled day. For the Toronto show, it seemed like everything was held down at the beginning though bands like The Story So Far, Sleeping with Sirens, Atreyu, and Four Year Strong.

First up was Philadelphia-based 5-man band, Circa Survive, and they started off performing very well and with great energy. Lead singer Anthony Green, brought his vocals to match well with the performing band, and it syncs together so well. Anthony’s energy was shown to be well astounding, and he even came in the photo pit to be with the crowd multiple times during tracks like Act Appalled and Rites of Investiture. For the first half of their set, the band brought so much high energy and initiated hard-rock based sounds, while the second half of their set was more soft, intricate sounding tracks. The delivery that the band gave was very well and the audience was very hyped up with them. Their stage energy was also very unique and hard-hitting as well. The mood and energies that they showed was proof that they really care about showing astounding live performing and for their fans. The colour palette and the lighting of the stage was very unique and very suitable for their performance

After Circa Survive’s set, Irvine, CA-based band Thrice came and performed a variety of tracks off their older projects like Beggars, The Illusion of Safety, as well as a variety of songs like Yellow Belly, The Artist in the Ambulance, and Only Us. Dustin Kensrue, the lead singer of Thrice, is known for bringing deeper and much more baritone-based vocals on more hard-hitting production tracks. They brought much softer, intricate vocals from song to song while focusing more on the lyrics and depth of each track. A lot of the people were dancing from song to song, and the crowd really seemed to really enjoy their performance. The stage lighting and production of their set went well from beginning to end; in terms of stage energy and crowd participation, the band moderates it very well, in terms of how they control the crowd and the melodies match in with the crowd’s energy.As Thrice finished their set, the stage technicians added a white backdrop near the sound system of the stage and provided a quick white and black cartoon video of grass breezing through the wind. It started off with lower vibrations of the band performing, and the volume was raised up with the grass blowing way too quickly. The grass then turned into flowers and that’s when the backdrop was dropped down to the ground, and all members of The Used came to the stage. The Orem, UT-based band came quickly with Bert McCracken, the lead of the band, is excited as ever to come to the mic to perform Take It Away, off their 2004 project, In Love and Death. Bert brought lots of harmony and consistency within his performance, and the band delivered very well with their hard-hitting instrumentation. Based on the crowd’s enjoyment and praise for the band’s hard work and consistency for their performance, they were raging and having fun while the band delivered great energy and lots of passion into their performance. Bert’s lyricism and messages throughout each song were quite remarkable as he performed, and he seemed to put much effort into performing. As well, the stage production was very remarkable and the entire festival was something that every fan and music lover wanted, a clear sense of interaction, rage-infused energy, well-performed sets, and the joy of seeing your favorite band performing classic songs and new tracks. It was something that I really enjoyed and that I hope the festival continues on with this consistency. The Rockstar Energy Disrupt Festival will still continue on until July 28th, 2019 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. You can keep up with the schedule at https://rockstardisrupt.com/