Awolnation gets amped up for sold-out Pittsburgh concert

As the tempo of a repeating bass note began to quicken, a conjoined, illuminated set of the…

Sheldon Satenstein | Senior Staff Photographer

Awolnation performed at the Strip District’s Altar Bar last Thursday.

As the tempo of a repeating bass note began to quicken, a conjoined, illuminated set of the letters “A” and “N” at the back of the stage turned from cloud white to deep purple. Soon after, the kick drum of the group’s drummer joined the bassist’s beat.

Allowing some time for the budding song to sink in, a guitar and keyboard eventually followed the initial sounds, and Awolnation’s lead singer, Aaron Bruno, began to violently bob his head up and down.

The sold-out crowd that packed into the Strip District’s Altar Bar last Thursday exploded.

As the skulls of the five musicians on stage rocked back and forth with a fury most people never unleash, Awolnation’s widely varied set began. It was as if the band was in another zone. The band members strummed their guitars with enough vigor to give new meaning to the term power chord. They crashed on the symbols loudly enough to emit the same decibel level as an entire marching band. They jumped high enough in the air to warrant spots on a 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic team. “A-wol-na-tion” projected through the speakers in unison with the drums and guitars, as an electronic voice continued the chant, which was echoed loudly by the crowd. Showtime.

Kicking off with a track reminiscent of the kind of vigor found in Rage Against the Machine’s “Freedom,” Bruno and company put the venue’s speakers to the test. Without allowing the crowd a moment’s reprieve, the band made a flawless transition between the first and second songs, as Awolnation continued its rock marathon. This wasn’t just a concert ­— it was an event. The energy of the Altar Bar’s crowd reflected Bruno’s screams into the microphone.

While he may have had no trouble diving into the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd, the group’s frontman is far from social.

“Still today, I have this problem saying goodbye to people,” Bruno said in an attempt to describe the capitalized band name which he helped create. “For me, the name is a metaphor for the whole concept of being able to escape in your mind by listening to music.”

From an acronym used by the army to describe deserting soldiers — away without leave — to the name of one of today’s most exciting bands, Awolnation is as hard to figure out as its frontman, Bruno.

“I used to go to hardcore shows, straight-edge shows and punk rock shows back in high school,” Bruno said. The result of Bruno’s boyhood influences in southern California is a band that lands somewhere between the electro-pop band fun. and Slayer.

As Awolnation continued with its set, the crowd did its best to contribute to the show. During an elongated chorus of the group’s hit track “Kill Your Heroes,” Bruno initiated a call-and-response pattern with the crowd, which repeated his “nah nah nahs” with utter enthusiasm. The metal show the audience had attended just minutes before had been replaced by something more reminiscent of a Fall Out Boy concert.

“We don’t think of our shows as one genre of music, we like all different types of music,” Bruno announced to the crowd between songs. He couldn’t have been more spot-on.

By the time the band got around to playing their most successful song, “Sail,” the audience had been treated to pop, rock, metal and electronic music, all for the price of a single ticket. Music that relies so heavily on computerized sound had made the successful transition to the stage, as the five band members gave electronica an organic sound unlike anything else.

Whatever it was, it worked, and both the band and the crowd knew it as they gave it their all over the course of the hour-long set.

“We’re gonna have your ears ringing for hours after the show,” Bruno said before taking the stage. And between the guitar-shredding solos and metal-infused rock, the crowd wasn’t disappointed.