Once, no, twice upon a time, I went to see Anti-Flag.

So! Here’s my concert "review" in which I am obviously totally biased. Haha!

#2

It was the first time for me seeing Anti-Flag in Brussels, but fortunately I was lucky enough to know a guy who works at the venue, so I could legally bring Marie Antoinette and take lots of photos. For this reason, I decided to stand in the front, center of the stage. Apart from festival shows, I don’t think I’ve stood center – I’ve always stood at the right, at Dos’ side. [I wonder why... ]

Justin Sane

This ‘new’ position allowed me to take some nice photos of Justin, and so I did. There were two lovely people standing behind me, who had come all the way from England to see Anti-Flag. The girl was very sweet, she gave me earplugs because she noticed I’d been covering my ears. [I have two perforated ear drums, it's not really a fun thing to have when there's loud music and you're in front of a stage. Usually I bring my own ear plugs but now I'd forgotten.] So I made friends

#2 and Justin

The show, in one word, was AWESOME! There was a really good vibe, the crowd was so into it! When the crowd is into it, Anti-Flag will do awesome things. A lot of people were crowdsurfing, even Chris #2 [Dos] was crowdsurfing, and at some point a whole lot of people got up on stage and started having a party with the band. It was great.

They played quite a lot of older songs, Mobilize/Terror State/For Blood And Empire stuff, not so many songs off Bright Lights of America, and also quite a few new songs. It was nice to see that they worked quite well in concert. I really like the new album, it’s really powerful and that also comes out during the show. The band didn’t talk much (since they figure fans already know what they’re about, so they can play more, talk less!) yet with one song Justin explained what it was about, it just showed that he really stood behind the meaning of that song.

#2

Really the best part of going to an Anti-Flag show, is just having a great time. It’s not so much about hearing their songs [because I couldn't hear the vocals really well, I don't think I could hear Chris Head at all to be honest :/] as it is about making new friends, going crazy and just having a great time. It’s the best when the band is having a good time themselves, too. I’ve seen them when they weren’t really feeling it, and it shows. It’s human, but it’s a bummer. That said, I think this show was the one where they just topped everything I’d seen them do before and went even more crazy. I love them

Head

What happened was, after their regular set, they gave us an encore. There was this girl that climbed on the stage, started shouting "we want more! we want more!" in Justin’s mic for about… three seconds, then this security guy came and just LIFTED HER UP, as if she was a piece of furniture or whatever… and walked off. It was hilarious!

Justin & #2

The encore though. The encore was EPIC. What happened was this: first Chris #2 came back with a megaphone. He started singing, soon joined by Chris Head on the guitar. Meanwhile, people were doing things on the stage, carrying drums and a stool and whatnot, into the crowd.

#2

Justin also came on stage, the song was Power to the Peaceful by the way. So imagine Chris singing through a megaphone and Justin singing and playing…

#2

And then all of a sudden I’ve found out that what they were doing is setting up a drumkit in the crowd, because Pat Thetic is playing the drums, not on stage, but in the crowd!

encore

This is what I could see at first, Dos singing. Yet when Pat was all set up, he too disappeared briefly into the crowd to join the party they were having over there. Sadly I was too tiny to get any photos of all this, but I swear it did happen and it was epic.

Justin

After the show I hung around a bit, I bought a t-shirt and chatted with the guy who was with the support band [a Dutch band!] and talked about going to the next show as well, which would be in the Netherlands. I also found my new friends again, and hung out a bit with them. They were going to wait for the band, which I unfortunately couldn’t do because I had an exam the next day. I was very sad, because I’d never met Chris #2 [Dos] or Justin Sane or Chris Head ever at one of the bazillion shows I’d been to. For some reason, they never come out. Yet I had met Pat Thetic twice or maybe even thrice already! So yeah. He came out again, and we took a picture – someone else took it, and she didn’t know how to use my DSLR, which is why Pat is making that "is this working?" face. Haha.

Pat & I