August Burns Red Pick Their Essential Live Songs

After more than 20 years of breakdowns, blastbeats and absolutely feral live shows, August Burns Red somehow still sound hungrier than most bands half their age. And with their tenth studio album Season Of Surrender dropping June 5 (pre-order here), the metalcore veterans are about to drag Australia into the very first full tour cycle celebrating the new record this September and October.

Ahead of their long-awaited return Down Under – their first Aussie headline run in seven years, supported by Bloom & I Promised The World – we caught up with frontman Jake Luhrs to talk about his favourite ABR songs to unleash live. From all-out pit warfare staples like White Washed through to deeply emotional fan-favourites and crushing new material from Season Of Surrender, Jake walked us through the songs that still hit hardest onstage after two decades of chaos.

1. ‘Behemoth’

JL: “I would say Behemoth from Season of Surrender is a big one for me. You can probably ask any touring musician this: why would they want to play new music? The answer is: because it’s new and it’s fun, and you want to see how the fans react to it and how they respond. It’s always a good time when you have new material that you get to perform live. I think that Behemoth has so much aggression to it. And live, it’s so in your face and it’s relentless. It adds a really aggressive energy to the set.”

2. ‘White Washed’

JL: “I also love playing White Washed, that’s our number one fan-favourite and everyone absolutely loves that song. And if we don’t play it, they’ll kill us, so we have to!”

3. ‘Mariana’s Trench’

JL: “I really like playing Mariana’s Trench too. I know it’s a very emotionally-driven song for a lot of people and that’s usually where I get to share and communicate that people have their own unique life to live and unique spirit about them and they were created for a unique purpose.

I really enjoy spreading that message because I firmly believe that. And I want people to not get thrown in a box with the world just telling them who they’re supposed to be.

And I really love that song because it kind of breaks up the energy in our set, it’s more calm and relaxed and more emotionally-driven.”

4. ‘Composure’

JL: ““I love Composure because it’s about one of our friends, Brandon Cardenas, and I think about him every time we play it.

He was going through a nasty breakup so we wrote this song about him, and it’s just funny to think of my buddy from 20 years ago, writing a song about him and then hearing so many people singing the lyrics and screaming it at shows. That’s really fun.”

5. ‘The Eleventh Hour’

JL: “We also play The Eleventh Hour, and that was the first song that I ever recorded with August Burns Red.

And on this tour at the moment, I’ve been dedicating the mosh pit to the women for that song. I encourage the women, I’m like, ‘hey, we’re gonna rip this song, The Eleventh Hour, and it’s just for the ladies to get in the mosh pit and go crazy’.

Being the first song I recorded, it’s really fun to play. And then just to see all these girls just going ham in the mosh pit and having a good time is bonus fun on top of that. Those are definitely my top five.”