Critic's evaluation
The streets around Liberty Square were busy. Between the shuttle of cars, the sidewalks were equally filled with pedestrians following their routine paths that, in faces of exhaustion, communicated, without saying anything, that they were returning home after another day of work and/or studies.
It was a normal urban landscape for the late afternoon of what seemed to be another Wednesday off the calendar. With its cool weather reaching the 22ºC informed by the metropolitan thermometers, 03/22 was far from being over. At least for a portion of people.
A little ahead of one of the entrances to the Liberdade subway, a line was already forming on the sidewalk at 6:31 PM. People passing by were curious and suspicious to understand the reason for that initial agglomeration that exalted the logo and images of Rise Against. Soon after, street vendors began to add their colors to the color palette of those present. Setting up impromptu clotheslines, they then began selling their confections, souvenirs for the event that would soon begin.
The more the clock ticked forward, the more people helped to fill the sidewalks with different shades of black. Until, at 7:28 pm, with a little less than half an hour of delay in comparison with the schedule previously given by the organization, the gates of Cine Joia were opened, wiping out the agglomeration created from its facade.
Inside, people were divided between the bathtub, the souvenir store and the bar. Still, one thing was unanimous. Everyone who walked through the space was staring at the stage with an analytical and curious look. This feat became more and more apparent as the clock ticked down and the expectations of seeing the Chicago quartet grew.
Statues On Fire
To minimize the anxiety or simply offer an introductory entertainment to the paying customers, Cine Joia received, as an opening, the Santo André group Statues On Fire, which entered the stage at 7:57 pm.
Even though the house was with visible bottlenecks in the audience, the group surprised with a melodic presentation fused to a hardcore with a remarkably Brazilian-Californian vein. And the most interesting thing was to notice that André Alves, the vocalist, knew how to deal with the situation, bringing all the audience present to himself.
With songs of social-political protest in tone, Statues On Fire did an intense forty-minute set. Among songs like Marielle, No Tomorrow and We Shall Overcome, the group, besides giving the audience a gift with the performance of the unreleased songs Tear You Apart and Refuse To Die, got a good and surprising organic receptivity from the audience, that between clapping and jumping, also dared to sing in chorus some parts of the songs.
That was where a problem lay. With badly equalized sound, it was difficult to interpret what the singer was singing. As an aggravating factor or not, the fact that the songs have lyricisms in English contributed to the lack of interpretability due to the disconnected volumes between voice and instruments.
On the other hand, however, when it came to the instrumental side, Statues On Fire delivered a sharp, in tune, and synergistic show. Powerful, the quartet's presentation was worth for the intense and explosive melodies that, despite having a good response, didn't get a generalized attention from the audience.
Even so, the performance, which ended at 8:37 pm to the sound of Flying Boats, the 10th song of the set, served as a good warm-up for the main show of the night, which would begin in a few minutes.
As the stage was being remodelled to receive the Chicago quartet, people came and went from the bar, but what was striking was how quickly the place filled up. At 8:46 pm, the Cine Joia was practically filled with people with proud eyes for having purchased an official product from the merchandising stand.
When the sound check ended at 9:09 pm, the eyes changed. They were a mixture of adrenaline, anguish, frenzy and curiosity that stared at the stage as if there was a mythological figure so notorious. Perhaps, even, one of these factors may have been the slight delay in the programming.
Rise Against
It didn't take much longer. Soon the main lights were turned off, leaving the stage in a dim atmosphere. At this moment, the dissonant and disconnected screams already took over the environment. When the sound box transmitted a playback of a speech by George W. Bush, the audience was ready to receive the main band.
At 9:10 pm, ten minutes after the start time given by the organizers, Rise Against took the stage, to standing ovations. Without amenities or bureaucratic greetings, the Chicago quartet, as a way to say 'hello', played Re-Education (Through Labor), the track chosen to open the Nowhere Generation World Tour shows.
At this instant, Cine Joia collapsed. Who was near the stage, unconcerned, soon became attentive and wide-eyed. After all, a generalized moshpit took over most of the audience space, causing those who didn't want to participate to be involuntarily taken near the bar under a rapidly increased body temperature.
The delivery was such that, already in The Violence, the moshpit still existed, but smaller and at specific points. Even so, the public did not do badly. They sang the entire song and even intoned shouts of order pulled by the singer. The famous punk wheel remained as a structural landscape of the show, increasing and decreasing in intensity between songs like Architects, House On Fire and Satellite.
After the performance Help Is On The Way, a track in which the audience was already physically tired and whose participation was only based on clapping and synchronized singing, Rise Against offered a breather with Swing Life Away. As Zach Blair, Joe Principe and Brandon Barnes left the stage, Tim McIlrath picked up his guitar, arranged the stool in the center of the stage and performed the song under an intimate theme. It was then that the synchronous harmony between audience and band reached its peak, as the choruses were sounded as a classic vocal line, magnifying what Mcllrath was singing.
With a curious set design, after the lull of Swing Life Way, Blair, Principe and Barnes return to the stage and, together with Mcllrath, pull Give It All. Brutally breaking the softness and calmness offered from the previous track, this song served as a cavalry injection of adrenaline, even promoting the rebirth of occasional intense moshpits. Give It All was also responsible for making the audience jump as one body during the entire chorus, making the Cine Joia's floor witness new tremors.
As an advertisement for their new material, Rise Against chose to present Nowhere Generation, the title track from their latest album. With good receptivity, the audience, along with the singer, sang all choruses in a unison chorus, which showed a surprising popular approval to the new content of the group.
Survive and Prayers Of The Refugee had great choruses, but it was only in the second song that the singing was so intense that you could barely hear what was being said by the singer himself. Both songs even closed the main set, causing the whole band to leave the stage after the performances.
Leaving the audience still thirsty and hungry for more music, it didn't take more than five minutes for Rise Against to retake their place. And that was to happen after the introductory children's choir playback of Make It Stop, the song that started the encore. Dramatically, every time the 'ooohs' were played back, the song received audience participation in vocal choruses.
Paper Wings came next with a more intense and explosive performance by the band. However, as the audience was even more exhausted compared to the moment when Help Is On The Way was presented, the track managed to elicit choruses, horned hands in the air, and generalized clapping pulled by the vocalist.
It was on Savior, the song chosen as the finale of a 17-song set, that a key change occurred. Offering a new generalized re-energizing, the song was responsible for making the audience sing at full throttle the entire lyric line, create new and bigger moshpit, and promote choruses so loud that, as it happened in Prayers Of The Refugee, you could barely hear the singer. These were the necessary ingredients to make Cine Joia almost go down once again.
At 10:42pm, Rise Against's side show had come to an end. Like a narrative-melodic loop, the Chicago quartet's performance had its closure as intense, visceral and explosive as its awakening. No wonder that, on the way out, many patrons were walking around shirtless and dripping with sweat.
The group's performance really surprised expectations, resulting in the quick sell-out of the 1200 tickets available for the occasion. With a great and intense reception, the show made many members of the audience wonder if the show had been held at Audio Club.
With its capacity of 3200 people and based on the sold out show on 03/22/23, one would think that in a bigger place like Audio Club and with more tickets available, Rise Against would be able to beat the sales of the hypothetical lot of tickets. Even so, Cine Joia held the volume of people there well.
The only thing left to be desired was the same thing that also affected the Statues On Fire concert: the sound equalization. With the volume of the instruments much higher than the vocals, the overall sound of the performance was overdriven by the melodic power of Rise Against. This made it difficult, at many moments, to hear Mcllrath's voice more clearly and sharply.
This makes one realize that the acoustics of Cine Joia were not made to receive performances of such caliber. Perhaps smaller, softer sounding bands, but bands of intensity, as it was with Statues On Fire and Rise Against, the house doesn't offer an adequate sound treatment.
Still, six years after his last passage through Brazil and 12 years after his first solo performance in the country, Rise Against redoes the feat with a show full of activism, catchphrases and social-political-environmental engagement. In melody, he reaffirmed his mastery in fusing power, intensity, viscerality, and energy.
For a next time, it would be acceptable if the group didn't perform in small places like Cine Joia and Carioca Club, the place responsible for introducing the Brazilian public to the band. Who knows, maybe next time the production company will put them, in fact, at Audio Club, or dare to take a chance at the Espaço Unimed.
Judging by the fact that their two solo shows in the country were sold out, any bet to increase the public is valid. For now, the public is left with adrenaline running through their veins as an intense memory of the only solo show Rise Against performed in Brazil during their Nowhere Generation World Tour. And for those who bought tickets for 03/24/23 Lollapalooza, the certainty that at least one good show will be seen is guaranteed.
