Monday night marked the return of…something; that x-factor; that undefinable it. On a base, factual level, mewithoutYou played their first show in Austin since 2015, when they opened for pop punk rockers the Menzingers, Monday night at the Mohawk. But Monday’s show was much more of a return than simply mewithoutYou’s first Austin, Texas performance in two years.
For this fall tour, mewithoutYou is celebrating the 15th anniversary of their first album, [A->B] Life. It’s been a very long 15 years for the band. Back in those heady days of the early Bush administration, mewithoutYou were firmly entrenched in the burgeoning world of Christian metal and hardcore. Lead singer Aaron Weiss cut his teeth guest screaming on Norma Jean hit “Memphis Will Be Laid to Waste” and [A->B] Life came out on the legendary label Tooth & Nail, known for promoting this style of sanctified heaviness.
Ever since, mewithoutYou have largely been wandering in the wilderness. They moved away from the Christian metal scene quickly and established a more folk, indie rock influenced sound that set them far apart from their peers.
Still, [A->B] Life’s impact has always haunted them. Much as they’ve run away from it, it has remained a cult classic and a reminder of the wildman days of their youth. At least for one tour this fall, that band made their return.
Seeing mewithoutYou in the past few years has always been a grab bag of hits from various albums, with lots of acoustic guitar and rousing singalongs. It’s been find for them and their ardent fans, but light on the moshing hardcore that they initially made their name with.
In playing [A->B] Life from start to finish, mewithoutYou reconnected themselves to something long lost. Anyone could tell it wasn’t going to be a typical show when Weiss ran on stage screaming and promptly stage dove into his adoring fans’ waiting hands. To put it bluntly, playing this album lit a fire under the band’s collective asses.
The vigor and venom of young men bashing their guitars and screaming of lost love was on full display. For a flash of a moment, a single night captured in time, mewithoutYou returned. It was as if they had not aged a day. It was as if the album came out yesterday.
The mewithoutYou that showed up for this tour was long thought dead and buried, crushed under the weight of the band’s collective aspirations to escape their roots. But what is already may never die, and it came bursting out of them like a cannonball on what could have easily just been a cash grab nostalgia tour.
The return of this side of mewithoutYou is very likely short lived. Weiss did quip that perhaps they should celebrate the 15th anniversary of their first album more often, judging by the audience’s demonstrative reaction, but the band closed with a set highlighting all the albums they’ve released since to remind everyone where they went after [A->B] Life was seemingly put to bed forevermore. Next year, they’ll likely return to playing a song off this album once in a blue moon and the acoustic guitars will replace the stage diving again. But for a brief time, the old mewithoutYou made their return. The old mewithoutYou is dead; long live mewithoutYou.
