Aiden : 10 Year Anniversary

On October 6, 2005, Aiden released their sophomore record Nightmare Anatomy that sent the band to new heights and made them a part of the goth scene of the early 2000s. Aiden, lead by Wil Francis, continued to put out records until their hiatus in 2011 after releasing their records Disguises and Some Kind of Hate.

Fast forward to August 2015. Wil Francis announced that Aiden would not only release a new record for free due to not being paid much anyways by their label for the other records, but also embark on a 10th anniversary tour for Nightmare Anatomy.

On November 4, Aiden brought their tour to the Palladium in Worcester. I was so excited to be able to witness this band for the first and only time in my life and celebrate an album that still means a lot to me 10 years later. I got in late so I missed the first band, but heard they were good. After was a band out of New York called Kissing Candice. They were a very interesting band to watch because you weren’t sure what the lead vocalist was going to do. For starters, they all had masks on that reminded me of Slipknot, but the lead vocalist kept spitting and letting it drip out of his mouth and sometimes on the crowd so I was just disgusted by it. Musically, they were a combination of Slipknot and The Acacia Strain.

The last opening band was called AshestoAngels from Bristol, England. You can tell they were influenced by Aiden and belonged on this tour because not only did the lead singer, Adam Crilly, sound kind of like Wil Francis but had an Aiden tattoo on his wrist as well. The set was so much fun even though 95% of the crowd did not know the words or who they were. The entire band was bouncing around the stage crazy with energy and that forced the crowd to move and bounce with them. I thoroughly enjoyed their set and Adam kept grabbing different girls’ hands to stage dive and get fully mixed in with the crowd. You could tell the band was happy to be there because not only was the energy high but they all had smiles on their faces despite their goth look.

Finally it was time for Aiden and everyone was so thrilled to be witnessing Nightmare Anatomy and several other old songs live. Although Wil Francis is the only remaining original member since the hiatus, every guy on stage banged through the set with energy

feeding off the crowd’s enthusiasm. The band opened with the song “Crawling Up From Hell” from the new self-titled record then barreled through songs such as “Scavengers of the Damned,” “Let The Right One In” “Moment” and “New Grave” that featured Adam Crilly screaming along with Wil. After a brief introduction and history behind the making of the record, Aiden burst into “Knife Blood Nightmare” the opening song on Nightmare Anatomy. Every song on the album got equal parts enthusiasm from Wil, the band, and the crowd. Despite the average age of the crowd being around 22, everyone became transported back to being 15-year-old scene kids screaming every word. It’s a cool experience to be in a crowd of people who still love an album as much as you do.

Something that stuck out to me about the set was Wil Francis saying, “Aiden is not just a band, it’s an attitude.” This statement is true to some extent because the music is about not caring what people think. The whole punk scene can be considered an attitude and not just music, so that was interesting to hear him say. They closed the night with songs from the debut record Our Gang’s Dark Oath, specifically “I Set My Friends on Fire” and “World by Storm.” Since “World by Storm” is a gang vocal type track, several members of AshestoAngels joined Aiden on the stage for the craziness. Despite the bruises from the mosh pits and the general chaos of the show, it was a great night. If that is the last time I ever see Aiden live, I’m glad I did.