Hinder

Hinder with special guest Aranda

Abby Pub in Chicago, IL presented what Hinder called their Live & Unplugged Bare Bones tour. With an upcoming album, Welcome to the Freakshow, out on December 4th, the guys in the band decided to do a small tour with their music stripped down.
Earlier in the day, I was able to check out a snippet of two songs as they played and were interviewed at 95 WILL Rock Studio East. Early indications gave me a taste of what tonight was in for - just some kick ass rock.
The Abby Pub is a music fixture in Chicago, but after some hard times they were featured on the TV show, Bar Rescue; with two levels to view the music and a smaller stage bring a very intimate feel to concert going.
Aranda is a band out of Oklahoma, featuring brothers Dameon & Gabe Aranda, with a small setup of a makeshift drumkit that Gabe played on next to his keyboards along with two chairs on each side that sat Dameon on guitar and their bass player. It is always interesting to see bands play unplugged, as it exposes themselves raw with no filters and post production. Having seen Aranda live, they have always impressed me and now with them signing with Wind-Up Records, they should have a big year in 2013. Opening the set with One More Lie, which rocks hard on their latest album, STOP THE WORLD, they poured out that same emotion and sounded great. This was followed by Undone and Still in the Dark; this was followed by a medley of Michael Jackson hits that sounded amazing and had the crowd pulled right in.
Aranda is all about pleasing the fans and having a good time as they showed with Testify and the soul soaring vocals on Satisfied before ending with Whyyawannabringmedown. After that, the set went out into the crowd to hang out and talk with the fans; this is for sure one of the best newer bands that are flying under the radar, but not for long.
With a short change around Hinder came on next to rock the Abby, opening with Use Me, Homecoming Queen, and What Ya Gonna Do. Right away you can see that this was different from other acoustic shows as they rocked just as hard as if they were plugged in. I think this helped with a full drum kit that Cody Hanson was beating the hell out of to produce a full in-your-face attack.
With some acoustic shows, a band member or two might not be on the tour, this was the full band that featured:

Joe Garvey – guitars
Mark King – guitar
Mike Rodden - Bass

Austin Winkler on vocals was in top form tonight as he played to the crowd and introduced several of the new songs like, Get Me Away From You and Is it Just Me. Judging from the crowd reaction and how great they sounded, I can see this album being their biggest to date since the 1st album. Playing hit after hit with songs like Better Than Me, How Long and the classic, Lips of an Angel, had everyone singing along and the building vibrating. Another song that had the place singing as loud as their lungs could was Without You, with a great mix of slow ballads and rockers like All American Nightmare & See You in Hell.
As they ended the night with the new single, Save me and one of the B-sides of their last album Bad Mutha Fucka which Austin apologized if he offended anyone but did not give a fuck because it’s Rock & Roll. They had crowd singing along to last song, Get Stoned and I don’t think the Abby Pub has ever been as loud as they ended a great night of music.
Hinder will be going back out on tour plugged in this December, but would love to see this sort of tour come around again.

Review & photos by Peter Lizano