Tune Talk: BlesstheFall

Willie Williams, Staff Writer

Metal core/Christian hardcore/Post hardcore band, BlesstheFall formed back in 2004 with guitarist Mike Frisby, drummer, Matt Traynor, and bassist and vocalist Jared Warth. Lead singer Craig Mabbitt came in to join these guys. In case you’re a BlesstheFall fan and you don’t know who Jared Warth is as the vocalist, he’s the one who does about 90% of the screaming in 99% of their songs. Although Jared is the only original member who remains in this band since they lost all the original members, Mabbitt left because he wanted to spend more time with his daughter, Traynor actually just recently left in 2018 and Frisby left in 2011.

Skipping past all of the history, we’ll get to how I discovered them.

I actually found out about BlesstheFall whenever I was scrolling through Facebook and I stumbled upon one of those posts where it says whichever band is in your birth month is the band you get to hang out with. The options were bands like My Chemical Romance, Fallout Boy, Paramore, Of Mice and Men, Pierce the Veil, Bring Me the Horizon, Black Veil Brides, and others. So it was an Emo calendar. I know. My birthday is in March so obviously BlesstheFall was in my birth month. I was curious about the band because I never heard of them before and I heard that they’re somewhat like Linkin Park, just a lot heavier. So I took a listen to them.

The first few songs I listened to were “Hollow Bodies,” “Cutthroat,” “Wishful Sinking,” “You Wear a Crown but You’re No King,” and “Hey Baby Here’s That Song You Wanted.” All great songs and I still listen to them a lot today.

I immediately fell in love with the band although I was really not expecting the bassist to be a pure screamo kind of guy, I was expecting some kind of rap in between the lead singer. You know because I was told these guys were somewhat like Linkin Park just heavier.

Anyway, as I’ve been listening to them. They actually came to Pittsburgh but I wasn’t able to see them because I already invested my money into seeing Metallica this past October, plus I’m investing even more money to go see MegaDeth and Ozzy Osbourne in the summer of 2019. I didn’t know MegaDeth and Ozzy were touring obviously until after BlesstheFall came to Pittsburgh but my mom told me that if I go to see BlesstheFall, I won’t be able to see any of my other bands if they come around last minute. So I decided to not go see BlesstheFall in case someone like the Red Hot Chili Peppers or even System of a Down came around. But I got Ozzy AND MegaDeth instead which is a double whammy for me.

Anyways, if you’re into the type of music that’s got the clean and soothing singer that’s also combined with the screamo background singer, you’d love BlesstheFall. They’re more like Bring Me the Horizon than they are Linkin Park. I’m just throwing that out there before you think that I’m saying that these guys sound like Linkin Park, because they really don’t. If Linkin Park was downright heavy metal and screamo, then they’d be in the same circle. As far as this goes, Linkin Park and BlesstheFall aren’t even close to being in the same genre. Touring maybe, but definitely not genre wise.

Album count is 8 for BlesstheFall. I’ve had a listen to all of them and I would highly recommend their 2009 album, “Witness,” not only because it’s really good, but it’s also the band’s first album they recorded with their new lead singer who joined in 2008 after Mabbitt left, Beau Bokan.