Bullet For My Valentine, Trivium, Sylosis, August Burns Red
March 30, 2025
PNE Forum, Vancouver, BC
On March 30th, heavy-hitting metalcore bands Bullet For My Valentine and Trivium brought The Poisoned Ascendancy Tour to the PNE Forum in Vancouver. The tour is celebrating 20 years of The Poison and Ascendancy, both released in 2005. The night was filled with nostalgia and celebration, with the bands performing the landmark metalcore albums that gave them their claim to fame 20 years ago.
Joining them were the metalcore bands Sylosis from Reading, Berkshire, and August Burns Red from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Both bands got the energy of the crowd up quickly, with fans headbanging, moshing, and crowd-surfing. August Burns Red singer Jake Luhrs egged on the crowd-surfing and wanted to “put the security guards to work.”
As the lights dimmed, chants of “Bullet!” “Bullet!” could be heard echoing through the venue. Two monumental songs off The Poison, “Tears Don’t Fall” and “All These Things I Hate (Revolve Around Me)” show the brilliance of the band, as they start as ballads and slowly transition into metal mayhem.
Closing the night off was Trivium. With Ascendancy being played in full, favourites such as “Pull Harder on The Strings of Your Martyr” and “A Gunshot To The Head Of Trepidation” had fans singing their hearts out. It also shed light on deeper cuts on the album that some fans were able to hear for the first time live, like “Declaration.”
The night was filled with nostalgia for the majority of fans, but many young faces could be seen in the audience singing along and headbanging, who weren’t born until years after these albums were released. That speaks to the testament of these two bands, twenty years later, still showing they have the chops and polished instrumentation to keep up while inspiring the next generation of metalcore.