December 15 marks a very important day in history for the Buffalo hardcore band Every Time I Die.

After hosting their fifteenth year of Christmas shows, the City of Buffalo proclaimed December 15, Every Time I Die Day. The Proclamation was signed by Delaware District Council Member Joel P. Feroleto and was shown off towards the end of Every Time I Die’s second annual ‘Tid The Season.

The Proclamation was signed due to the recognition of their musical achievements and for the continued advocacy the band gives Buffalo.

After selling out multiple Christmas shows in 2016, the band decided to turn their event into a festival. 2017 marked the first Tid The Season event hosted at Riverworks.

Just like all of their hometown shows, every single Every Time I Die Christmas show, including the past two years of Tid The Season has sold out months in advance.

This year’s event opened up to ticketholders at Riverworks at 1 p.m. Instead of doing music all day, there were about two hours of wrestling featuring, ETID’s own, Andy Williams, Butcher and the Blade, Jimmy Havoc, and Saraya Knight.

Fans from all over the world flew into Buffalo for this legendary 12-hour event, filling Buffalo Riverworks with over 3,500 people, making this Every Time I Die’s biggest headlining show.

Sharing the stage with them were Turnstile, Angel Du$t, The Menzingers, Vein, Knocked Loose, The Bouncing Souls, and another legendary Buffalo punk band, Snapcase.

Each band performing had their own unique sound that added to the various music genres at Tid The Season, all of which had a lot of moshing and encouraged crowdsurfing.

Opening up the show was Vein, a hardcore punk band from Boston, Massachusetts.  The band formed in 2013 and became known for frequently touring with other hardcore bands like Code Orange. The band released their first full length in 2017, titled “Errorzone.”  The album managed to peak at #21 in Billboard charts’ Hard Rock album chart.

When it comes to their sound, it has been described as a variation of hardcore punk with influences from screamo, noisecore/mathcore, nu metal, and horror soundtracks to films and games. (Dean Brown, Pop Matters) Their latest release has been especially noted for its nu metal sound.

Angel Du$t is another hardcore punk band coming from the east coast in Baltimore, Maryland. The band features members from Trapped Under Ice and Turnstile, another band that played Tid The Season. Their fast-paced acoustic guitar chords, speedy vocals, and sunny melodies had fans old and new engaging in the crowd. The band released two songs in November, which includes, “Take Away The Pain.” This song is a bit different for the hardcore punk band due to its dashes of saxophone scattered throughout the song.

Knocked Loose had the rowdiest crowd I have ever seen. Originating from Oldham County, Kentucky, their set had fans flying through the air. When reviewing their music, New Noise Magazine described their sound as, “as being akin to “Comeback Kid at their heaviest with some added doses of Slayer riffs and Code Orange-style malice.” Lead vocalist, Bryan Garris, has described their sound as being “ sandwiched between hardcore and metalcore.” He has also stated that the band’s intention was to produce a diverse sound that was hard to categorize.  

Up next was my personal favorite, The Menzingers, a punk rock band from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Their most recent album, After The Party, which was released in early 2017, reached number 67 on the Billboard 200’s chart-despite the little promotion. Many music critics have even called it 2017’s album of the year. The Menzingers had the most mellow of a crowd for this event either due to the slight genre difference or perhaps the fact that half of the crowd was already exhausted from seeing the first four bands.

By the time The Bouncing Souls had hit the stage everybody had started to get a little tired, but not tired enough to quit dancing around. Members of this punk rock band from New Jersey did not attend college but did decide to live in a college town. New Brunswick, New Jersey, home of Rutgers University had a reputation for supporting underground music. The Bouncing Souls soon became a staple in the local scene there, they even helped local bands make a name for themselves. Forming in 1989, the band has seen the punk genre transform into what it is now.

Snapcase has been a Buffalo staple since 1991. Despite their disbanding in 2005, it only took them five years to come back and help revive the Buffalo punk scene in 2010. Their latest record, “End Transmission,” has been called an intense, artistic, cathartic and progressive musical odyssey. It is an album for true fans of groundbreaking, distinguished music. Snapcase have built a reputation for composing lyrics exploring themes of self-determination, affirmation and personal challenge.

Every Time I Die got on stage at 11 pm. The band was using this show along with the tour preceding this event,  to celebrate 20 years of being a band. With that being said, the band played a few songs from each album they had, playing a total of 24 songs. Although it had been so late, fans did not stop from being active in the crowd. One of their most popular songs, “Underwater Bimbos From Outerspace,” had everybody going absolutely nuts.

Tid The Season has a lot more to offer than just music and wrestling. There were free ice skating and curling that took place all day, a bucking reindeer (a Christmas version of the mechanical bull), opportunities to get photos with Santa, and a free photo booth. To make this event even more special, the band had their own special “Buffalo 666” beer distributed by Barrier Brewing Company.

Those who were able to get their hands on it were lucky, the venue had run out before the second band had performed.

Although the all-day event was running a little behind, that didn’t stop insanity from ensuing during Every Time I Die’s 90-minute set.

Being at an Every Time I Die hometown show is a magical moment. There are people who I have met who are not into hardcore music but still attend for the experience.

Before the night had ended, Tid The Season 3 was already announced and will be a two-day event instead of one.

It wouldn’t be the holidays in Buffalo without Every Time I Die.