Recently, the rock outfit Halocene made their second stop of the Maleficent tour in Greenville, SC at The Radio Room. The band has prided themselves on being independant and doing everything themselves with no big label or management backing them. It was to my suprise when I walked in that the show was damn near sold out. A band that has been active since 2008, had fallen through my radar and never seemed to hear about them. Yet here they were, coming off a huge year in the streaming world with their cover of ‘Unholy‘ by Sam Smith, almost selling out one of the most frequented venues in the area.
Halocene were joined by someone who I have been a fan of for quite sometime, the power house Lauren Babic, and another band called AlphaMega. It was unusual for me to go to a show in which there weren’t any local bands opening, come to find out, that’s because Halocene have an insane endurance cap performing for over an hour, both covers and originals. Unless you’re a legacy band with a deep catalog or Taylor Swift, no one is touring and playing that long of a set let alone in a club tour.
AlphaMega were a good band opening up, limited on stage prescene due to the size of stage and back line set up, but frontman Adam Ryan delievered some great vocal work, at times leaning in a 3 Days Grace or Breaking Benjamin feel, which isn’t bad company to be in. The crowd were into them as well and warmed everyone up.
Halocene took the stage opening with their song and tour namesake, Maleficent. Frontwoman Addie Nicole Amick came out swinging and commanding the stage right off the bat, and the crowd didn’t waste anytime getting involved and singing along. Some of the other highlights in the opening bit were covering Linkin Park’s Numb and Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name. Before bringing out Lauren Babic, they performed an original that had lots of personal meaning to Amick, Repent.
Halocene and Lauren Babic wasted no time and took the energy to 100 when they opened with a cover of Toxic by Britney Spears and Bring Me To Life by Evanescene. The two women played off each other well, each having a piece and role in various vocal parts of the songs while the band would play the twist they added to each of these, usually with an active rock meets metalcore flair. Babic then had a moment to sing one of her songs which also had a special place for her called Lovely. Both then played some other cover songs such as Welcome To The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit before performing their own song This Is Our War, which got some crowd involvement singing the chorus.
Closing out, they went out with a bang playing the song that caused them to go viral in 2022, Sam Smith’s Unholy.
