Last May, The Fierce And The Dead played RoSFest, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The visa application progress was long and arduous, and to prove their identity they actually scanned in and sent off every feature they’d ever had in Prog. Initially they were denied, but after a second attempt and a stressful interview at the American embassy, they were finally rubber-stamped. That’s a lot of trouble and a long way to go for one show, even one of the premier neo/symphonic events. TFATD were something of a wild card on a bill headlined by Neal Morse. Even as they went onstage, at 11am before a room of nearly 800 people, the four Northampton boys had no clue how their odd, fluid blend of post-, math- and prog rock would go down.
Two tunes into their set, guitarist Matt Stevens broke a string. Rather than reach for his back-up axe, he pulled a new string out of his back pocket and restrung his Telecaster, right there and then. Kev Feazey, the band’s bassist and producer-in-chief, sounds proud as he recalls it. “Me and Steve [Cleaton, their other guitarist] just had a little chat with the audience while Matt did it. I think they wondered what we were doing, because they’re used to these big, professional prog bands and here are these four English blokes saying, ‘Hello! How are you?’ But this is what we do, it puts everybody at ease and we went down surprisingly well. Live shows should be joyous, inclusive – fun, happy and up, and RoSFest was one of the best we’ve ever done.”
