Having spent my Sunday morning basking in the digital delights of Fearless Records’ ambitious live-streamed ‘festival’ Fearless At Home, it was tough to not start the week with a spring in my step, something to which my fellow viewers can attest.
Following months of pandemic anxiety, weeks of lockdown and countless tour cancellations, Fearless At Home gave us three and a half of hours of reprieve with a much needed dose of hits, hijinks and above all else, hope for things to come.
The Fearless At Home line up was pieced together using just about the entire label roster, all of whom took the time to either perform, chat, entertain or simply check in with fans.
We’ll begin with the hits. Some 11,000+ live viewers tuned in (totalling almost 150,000 views since) around the globe to catch performances from As It Is, Set It Off, iDKHOW, Greyscale, The Almost, The Pretty Reckless and The Plain White T’s, however the performance of the event, per audience reaction, goes to Ice Nine Kills, who reimagined the Fountains of Wayne classic Stacy’s Mom through the lens of Friday 13th, dubbing the instant hit rendition Jason’s Mom.
Though we may have tuned in for the music, it was the hijinks contained within Fearless At Home that kept us on the edge of our seat. While it’s unclear what the initial plan was for I Prevail to go up against Movements in a round of Rocket League, the end result was hilarity spilling out over the edges before our eyes. We won’t spoil the results but we will say things are very…one sided. Ice Nine Kills earn another mention with frontman Spencer channeling his best Patrick Bateman for a hand washing tutorial, and for a surprise Q&A with actor Ari Lehman, who appeared as Jason in the first Friday, 13th film. It was here that we learned that Lehman fronts a similar theatrecore band called First Jason, in a fun fact that reminds us that the universe really is a wonderful place sometimes.
Having said that, the award for the greatest hijinks throughout the entire 3.5 hour extravaganza goes to Underoath. For 10 minutes, the beloved Fearless icons regaled us with sales of silly buggers and debauchery from past tours. Nothing was off limits from excessive drinking, drunken Slipknot sessions and how a …cultural misunderstanding…led to some short-lived beef with Bring Me The Horizon.
The songs performed will fade from our heads and eventually we’ll stop laughing at the jokes, but the hope instilled by the event lives on. It came thick, and fast and in many forms. One form being new material; Starset, The Plot In You and Volumes all used Fearless At Home to air brand new music.
Then there was the promise of things to come….
Australian reps Eat Your Heart Out confirmed that they’ve been using this time to start writing, All That Remains confirmed the same and perhaps most surprisingly, French exports Chunk! No Captain Chunk confirmed they’ve started working on their first new material since 2016. On top of that, brand new outfit Not A Toy were announced, with the first offering of their wares ‘J Cash’ premiering in the first act of the stream.
Pierce the Veil’s Vic Fuentes tuned in briefly with an update on the ongoing hard work his not for profit, the Living The Dream Foundation, continues to do through these trying times.
Though all scattered throughout the globe, there was a strong sense of both presence and community in watching Fearless At Home. Donations to Crew Nation were damn near impossible to keep track of, and no doubt came to an accumulative total of a metric fuck tonne.
Coming from a previous sceptic of live-streamed events, Fearless At Home more than scratched the maddening itch for live music and brought with it enough sense of community and camaraderie to re-fill some of our depleted human contact.
Same time this weekend, Fearless?
Fearless At Home will remain streamable in its entirety on YouTube until Wednesday, 13th May.
