There is still a place for heart-on-your-sleeve rock and roll and the Violet Burning has it abundantly. Even though Micheal Pritzl was at this very venue only a couple weeks earlier, he brought his band back last night to deliver a couple hours of rock for us. The band features a new album, titled Drop Dead, an album strongly influenced by U2, The Cure, Velvet Underground, and Smashing Pumpkins and I can’t recommend it enough. The four-piece band deliver many songs from the new CD and a couple of their old classics, such as “Ilaria”, “Goldmine”, “Fabulous Like You”, “Berlin Kitty” which probably got the loudest cheers of the evening, and “Low”, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard live before.

Love Takes Flight opened the show. The five-piece pop-punk bands played about five songs that were mildly reminiscent of The Moon is Down-era Further Seems Forever.

I really don’t get why the Violet Burning doesn’t draw bigger crowds (maybe it had to do with Copeland playing at the Masquerade on the same night) because the band is solid, rocks out, has a wealth of techical gadgetry and talent, and has a solid underpinning of faith holding every thing together. I guess Pritzl isn’t “magazine cover” material and so the band doesn’t get that much press coverage. That’s a shame because people don’t really realize what they are missing out on.