A Killer’s Confession w/ Tallah, New Fiction, Pigweed, and Project Redline @ Beauty Bar Las Vegas

With a night full of music going on in typical Las Vegas fashion, things lead to me coming to the Beauty Bar on Fremont St. and getting busy.

I ended up interviewing the fellas in Tallah, as well as New Fiction, and photographing this show.

I missed the first 4 or 5 songs from local Las Vegas rock band Project Redline due to interviewing New Fiction, but was able to catch their last 3 songs. You could say I have a bit of history with a couple of these guys. That’s another story for another time. But this was my first time seeing them perform, and there was a decent amount of people already for their performance. Solid warm up to a long night of rocking.

Pigweed took the stage next. Let me put emphasis on they took the stage. There wasn’t a whole lot of room left when they got up there, but they made sure to do everything they could to take advantage of every inch of it. Straight out of a 1999 playbook, this rap metal throwback was fun, if anything. I’m a big fan of “nu-metal”, so you’re not gonna get any hate from me. My only complaint was the guitar mix was too loud and it just sounded like mud most of the time with rapping and screams over it. It wouldn’t have hurt to see Pigweed on a bigger stage just to see what more they could’ve done. Their cover of Sepultura’s “Roots Bloody Roots” was fun as fuck though!

Denver, Colorado’s New Fiction came on and brought on a whole other element to the night’s mix. (Sidenote: Every band was completely different from eachother and that was refreshing.) A little bit of post-hardcore, a little bit of hard rock, a little bit of emo, throw that together and you got quite an energetic performance from these dudes. Probably the “odd man out” of the night, genre wise, but I don’t think that stopped them from making any new fans and adding to the excitement.

Then, there was Tallah. It’s safe to say that NObody besides the other touring bands were expecting what we saw. The best way I can describe their live show is like Dillinger Escape Plan on crack, in the best ways possible, of course. Every musician in this band was all over the place, literally, physically, musically, everything. By far one of the most intense artistic performances I’ve ever seen. Drummer Max Portnoy quite purposely shows that he isn’t following in his famous dad’s footsteps, while also completely showing that he’s an entirely different force to be reckoned with behind the kit. I would totally see these guys again just to witness this controlled train wreck again because it was quite awesome, and unexpected. They threw in a cover of System of a Down’s “Sugar” for good measure.

I’ve had the pleasure to see Waylon Reavis in his previous venture on more than one occasion. It’s pretty cool to see him be the sole vocal focus, with a complementary line up backing him up, and not too shabby of a stage show to boot. If you haven’t listened to their debut album, “Unbroken”, you probably should. You don’t even have to be a Mushroomhead fan. Just a fan of Metal in general. No real complaints for A Killer’s Confession. Great performance. Great sound. Everyone had a blast. Even Waylon seemed like he was impressed with everything in general. I think we’ll likely get another Vegas show on their next tour(s). In the meantime, I’m anxious to hear a 2nd album!

I know Melissa Ethridge was some serious competition for this 😉 ok ok, maybe Parkway Drive/August Burns Red provided a little bit more, but considering all the options and it being a weekend night, I’d say the turnout was really good. A little bit of something for everybody, and then some.

Review and photos by Marcus Miller