Live review: LeATHERMOUTH in Orlando, Florida, USA, August 20 2008

Leathermouth is one of the side projects of Frank Iero, guitarist of My Chemical Romance. Frank is their lead singer and songwriter. With MCR taking a long break, he has time to further develop Leathermouth and tour together with Reggie and the Full Effect, for whom Frank plays bass. MCRF moderator Becky went to the first show of this tour and wrote a review for us.

With Tropical Storm Fay moving in on our county we knew that during our 1 1/2 hour car ride (each way), we were going to drive through some pretty shitty weather. We went back and forth on whether we were going to go at all. We ended up saying fuck it and got in the car and headed out. When we got to the venue it was about 10 minutes before the doors opened. We got in line, which wasn't too long, and stood in the drizzling rain and waited. Once inside we saw how truly small the venue was and we were stoked! The pit area was lower than the rest of the place, so everyone not in the pit had an excellent view, being even in height with the stage. We made our way to the right side of the stage and planted ourselves right above one of the sets of steps going down into the pit area. It was perfect.

Support act: Warship

Warship started at half past 7 and played for a while. They were alright, but I was so amped up to see Leathermouth that I just wanted them to finish. We weren't sure if Hey Chris or Leathermouth would be next, but soon I spotted James Dewees like 2 feet away from me getting ready to bring stuff onstage, so I knew LM was up next!

Leathermouth

As soon as Warship was done, the guys from LM started moving their stuff onstage, including Frank, who I noticed still has that silly little moustache and a poochy little belly. It looks like his time off is treating him well. Each of the band member’s white t-shirts had one letter from Leathermouth written on them. Frank also started out with a white jeans jacket on. They quickly set up their stuff, which was basically a bunch of American flags draped over the equipment with the circle/slash Leathermouth symbol drawn on them. The audience was a lot less aggressive than I thought they would be. Most didn't know the words, but the energy was good nonetheless. Frank started off the show by asking how many people were under 18 at a this age restricted show. Quite a few people responded with screams. Then he asked how many of the people under 18 were of the ‘female persuasion’. Those were his words. More screamed of course, and he said that the first song was for them.

By the time the second song started, Frank had lost the jeans jacket and his shirt was untucked. He must have really been feeling the performance energy because he surprised everyone by jumping into the audience mid-song. It was awesome and so unexpected! It took him a few minutes to get hoisted back up onstage, but he kept singing the whole time. The setlist continued and at one point between songs someone yelled, "I love you Frank!" and he replied with "Yeah, whatever" and everyone laughed. It was funny. He also said between two of the songs that if you couldn't hear him because he was mumbling that that was too bad. He had quite a little attitude and it was great.

Before 5th Period he started telling a little story about how the next song was about a kid who goes to school and gets picked on everyday with people calling him a faggot and other names and that the kid made a list of all the people who had wronged him. He went on to say that the kid did what any other normal kid would do... he went home and got his 45 and went to school and killed all of them. He made sure to mention that he wasn't condoning school violence, but that he was just telling it how it was for this particular kid. I loved hearing the songs I was familiar with and I sang along with all the words that I knew.

Before the last song he said that they were going to play a cover and then at the last minute decided not to. The last song was Murder Was the Case and during the part where he says search and destroy you fucking whore he pointed at each of his search and destroy tattoos as he sang the words. It was clever and if you weren't paying attention and didn't know he had those tattoos, you would probably not have noticed. After their last song it was done and they quickly started clearing the stage of the flags and guitars and such and that was it. Because we knew the storm was moving in on where we live by midnight, we made the choice to not stay for Reggie and the Full Effect. I would have loved to have seen the whole show, but we knew we really needed to get on the road if we wanted to miss driving through the worst of it. And the weather was much worse on the way home and continued to get worse thereafter, so we were glad we left when we did.

Verdict: It was amazing to see Frank as a leading man. I am so glad we went and I would gladly drive through another tropical storm to see them again (even though my husband drove).

Becky [guest reviewer]