Trinity of Terror Tour takes over Phoenix

The long anticipated Trinity of Terror Tour kicked off in Mesa, Arizona to a sold-out crowd of 5,000 people! Fans have been asking to see these three bands — Motionless in White, Ice Nine Kills and Black Veil Brides — do a tour together for years and now it’s finally happening!

This was the first time I’ve ever been able to go to an opening night of a tour!

Lilith Czar kicked off the night; I just recently became a fan of hers after hearing her perform a live set on Sirius XM’s Octane. She played “Feed my Chaos”, “Edge of Seventeen” (a Stevie Nicks cover), “King” and closed with her hit, “Anarchy”. I thought it was really cool that she gets to be on tour with her husband, Andy Black, of Black Veil Brides.

Since it’s a triple headlining tour, all three bands have full sets and rotate the order in which they play every night. It was a lot of fun trying to figure out the order of the bands for that first night just based on drum kits. We saw Ice Nine’s kit to the side of the stage, so we knew they were either second or closing. We could only see a little bit of the one onstage, since it was covered, but we saw that it was red. We went on all the band’s socials trying to figure it out and eventually found out it was Black Veils Brides!

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Black Veil Brides before this show, just because I haven’t heard a lot of their songs, but they did put on a really entertaining set! They played “Crimson Skies” and “Scarlett Cross” off their latest album, The Phantom Tomorrow; those were about the only songs I knew, so that was cool! We even got to hear the live debut of “Stolen Omen”, which is from their fourth self-titled album. Drummer, Christian “CC” Coma, did a drum solo, which was sick! I haven’t heard a drum solo at a show in a really long time — I love when bands bring back the old-school style! They closed their set with “In The End”. 

During the break, the arena started playing horror movie scores, so we all knew Ice Nine Kills was up next!!

Scores from Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street added such an eerie vibe, especially since it was at night at an outdoor amphitheater, but I was all for it! Ice Nine Kills very quickly became one of my favorite bands after seeing them perform at Blue Ridge Rock Fest. If it wasn’t their music that intrigued me, it was their theatrics. They don’t only write music inspired by horror movies, but they put on such a show for each of their songs that you feel as if you’re in the movie itself. Before the show, I was thinking how cool it would be to hear “Wurst Vacation” and “Take Your Pick” live, because those were the two songs that really got me hooked on Ice Nine. They aren’t the most popular songs off their latest album, Welcome to Horrorwood, so I thought the likelihood of playing them was low. But, the second song they played was “Wurst Vacation”!! I heard the intro to the song and literally screamed so loud — I was actually going to experience hearing it live! Halfway through their set, I heard the sound of a heart rate monitor. My heart actually dropped, because that’s the beginning of “Take Your Pick”. I am still in such disbelief that I was able to hear those two songs live on the same night!  

During Ice Nine’s last song, “American Nightmare”, Spencer Charnas told the crowd to open up a pit. I looked over to the crowd and saw a huge ball of fire. Apparently, somebody took their shirt off and lit it on fire. It was gone as quickly as it came, but I’ve never seen somebody light a fire in a pit… honestly, that was kind of scary!

If you happened to have read our Blue Ridge Day Two article, you’ll know how much I just love Motionless’s walk-out song! So, when they started playing it, I felt so many Blue Ridge memories come back, remembering the feeling I had seeing Motionless in White for the first time. 

Motionless came out and started off with “Thoughts and Prayers”!

I’ve been to a couple Motionless shows now, but that was probably the loudest I’ve heard a crowd scream “opening your fucking eyes”! Phoenix definitely brought the energy that night. Someone even started a “Chris is daddy” chant at some point, which was great. Somewhere midway through the set, Chris Motionless saw that one of the security guards was singing all the words. He went up to her and was like, “you know what, just take the night off.” He invited her to come up onstage to watch the whole rest of the set from the side! We also got to hear the live debut of “Cyberhex”: I’ve had this song on repeat this whole week since it’s been released, anxiously waiting to hear it live. I was amazed at how many people knew all the words already and even Chris was like, “It’s only been out a week!”

Towards the end of their last song, bassist Justin Marrow took a wrong step and fell backwards. He landed on his back, but did not miss a beat! He was just laying on the ground, continuing to play while laughing it off for the rest of the song. During their last song, “Eternally Yours”, Chris Motionless grabbed a bouquet of flowers and threw them out to the crowd. There was one little girl standing in front of me and he came over to specifically give her a flower. It was the cutest moment. Trinity of Terror opening night left us all with a major “bang-over” and will always be a night to dismember!

Photography by Kaiya Vandemark

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