GRAYSCALE AT THE QUEEN IN WILMINGTON
Grayscale wrapped up The Umbra Tour this past weekend with a performance Sunday night at The Queen in Wilmington, Delaware with support from THE WLDLFE, Cemetery Sun, and Young Culture. Having never listened to the opening bands, I was thoroughly impressed by how much I enjoyed each of their sets. I definitely have some new music to explore and add to my playlists after seeing them. The crowd didn’t seem unfamiliar, however, with plenty of enthusiasm and crowd surfing from the first band onward.
This tour came behind the release of Grayscale’s latest full length album, Umbra, which has been on steady rotation for me since its release a few months back. Grayscale’s setlist actually featured the majority of Umbra in tracklist order which was really cool. My personal favorites are probably “Dirty Bombs” and “Bad Love”. Some of the other songs they played from previous albums included “Painkiller Weather”, “In Violet”, and “Atlantic”.
Not only was this the final night of the tour, but this was the closest thing to a hometown show on this tour for Grayscale, who are proudly from Philadelphia, so there were a lot of friends and family in attendance. Frontman Collin Walsh took a few minutes to shout out his high school English teacher for being at the show and thanked her for her encouragement and for inspiring him to write music. There were a lot of heartfelt moments like this shared on stage from all of the bands, as you could feel that none of them wanted the tour to end as they shared sentiments about how great of a time they’d been having lately. Perhaps the most heartfelt moment, though, was a wedding proposal in the middle of the crowd during Grayscale, prefaced by Collin shouting the couple out by name and dedicating a song to them.
I have to say, I’m not sure if Grayscale were trying extra hard to impress the friends and family in attendance or if they genuinely keep getting better each time I see them, but from start to end, the songs sounded incredible live. I think they genuinely just keep getting better. Ever since Nella Vita I’ve been hooked on their music, and Umbra took that a level up, so I can’t wait to see what’s next for Grayscale.