March 12th, 2014 
Jacob Tender 
Opening night of the Great American Cult Tour took place in Cleveland, OH last week. As Bayside’s first headlining tour in some time, I was prepared for a fantastic show. I wasn’t disappointed.
I asked local photographer Andy Wells to accompany me and his pictures from the show can be found below.
The lineup: Ohio’s own pop-punk quartet Mixtapes, Post-Grunge standouts Daylight, returning champs Four Year Strong, and then Bayside themselves.
I’ve seen Mixtapes play once before. It was at the 2013 Skate & Surf festival and I didn’t like them much. The music lacked luster and the vocal performances left much to be desired. The over-appreciated pop-punk band features dual vocals. One man, one woman. In their performance at the Beachland Ballroom, both seemed to be worn out by the third song of their set. It sounded as if they didn’t even care by the last.
Those who seemed to enjoy the set the most were the several kids moshing about in a crowd of generally unenthused show-goers. They also took the opportunity to announce their discontent with Cleveland publication Alternative Press who gave them a second poor album review. To me, that leaves a poor second impression.
The crowd wasn’t particularly amped at this point in the show, which was fine. Daylight doesn’t exactly play the upbeat type of music the rest of the bill offers. If I were into grunge music, I’d love Daylight. That said, their 2013 effort, Jar, is a fine piece of work. Their set was certainly different from the rest and I’m not sure the crowd knew what to think of it in the context of the show, but I enjoyed it all the same.
Four Year Strong’s set in Cleveland was their first since December. The Great American Cult Tour is their first tour in the United States since Warped 2012. The return was welcomed with an enthusiastic crowd of fans singing along to every word. This can be seen as both good and bad, considering the band has a new album ready to be released. Not one new song was played during the set. They jumped around their discography quite a bit, but no words of consequence were given in regards to the new record.
Bayside continues to prove their status as the most consistently great band touring today. Playing a set of roughly 20 songs, they worked the crowd with their greatest hits and newest favorites. Several springing from their brand new album Cult. They didn’t chat much in their set, intent to cram as many songs as they could into the sold-out crowd’s awaiting ears.
They played “Stuttering,” a song Bayside singer and songwriter admits in a UTG interview they were “nervous about” performing. I didn’t have the opportunity to talk to the band afterwards, but if they could see what I saw during that particular song, they have nothing to worry about there. It was just as well received as any of their classics.
Review written by Jacob Tender (Follow him on Twitter)
Photos by Andrew Wells
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