Best shows of 2008, Killing The Dream, Pulling Teeth

Our last trip into the best shows of 2008 covered the January 2nd show at the Muse in Nashville, TN. A show featuring a heavyweight line up of Have Heart, Down To Nothing, I Rise and many others. This will cover the night that would follow, and the real reason that we drove 9 hours to Nashville in the first place.

This next show was the crown jewel of the trip, it was to take place at The Anchor, a church not far from The Muse the night before. It's a venue run by a cool church group who's not so authoritarian on the bands that they let play their venue as evident by the nights lineup, Pulling Teeth, Ruiner and Killing The Dream. Playing alongside these titans were again a wide array of smaller bands to fill it out, including the ever fantastic hometown heroes, Hollywood.

Still 'hungover' from the trip and subsequent lack of proper rest and way too long spent at a local mall (fuck that story), the beginning of the show is again something of a blur. Pulling Teeth would be closing the night out, Killing The Dream playing third to last and Ruiner playing second to last. Oddly enough, the first awesome moments of this show as I can recall was Hollywood. I had seen the band before as they had toured up through the Midwest into Illinois, but seeing them in their hometown, in their element was something special. Kids just went nuts, it felt like the floor was going to cave in at times. Completely ridiculous.

Initially, I felt bad for Killing The Dream to have to come on after that, but they were the reason we were there, and they did not disappoint. They ripped through a set of the best tracks of their two albums at the time and played a new song. Not a lot of kids really seemed to know much of their words or anything it seemed like, until they played their epic finale, 'We're All Dead Ends', then all of a sudden it seemed like every single person in the building knew every word. It was an awesome set, totally worth the trip. Unfortunately, I was outside cooling off while Ruiner played, so I don't have anything to say about that set.

Pulling Teeth closed the show, and having known little about them at the time, I was merely a bystander, but I was made a fan that night. Pulling Teeth had played Nashville a few times before that I gathered, and a lot of kids there were familiar with their music, so it was another intense set as to be expected at this point. Kids reacted to what they were saying, and moshed hard. Pulling Teeth is now one of my favorite bands thanks to that night.

That brought an end to night 2 of 'Nashville Fest'. The next night would be the closer featuring another batch of high intensity sets from Kids Like Us, Know The Score, The Mongoloids, Barricade and a bunch more, and that would conclude the trip to Nashville.

Considerably more broke than before we arrived, we made the 9 hour drive home and were pleased with the results of our quest to see Killing The Dream.