Times Square Bomb Scare Created Misinformation for Woe of Tyrants

On May 1, New York City's Times Square was closed off, looking like a nighttime 'Vanilla Sky' scene -- but with no confused Tom Cruise running around. There were just police and city officers dealing with a possible bomb threat. But while all this was going on, the Nokia Theater was alive in the name of metal.

"It was definitely an interesting and intense thing to experience," Woe of Tyrants vocalist Chris Catanzaro told Noisecreep, describing what it was like to be playing a show with metal legends Overkill while outside the city that never sleeps waited. "We had heard talk of a bomb, and different uninformed sources were telling us that they had heard the actual explosion (which obviously didn't even happen). We just turned on the news and waited to get a little more concrete information from there."

Even in the age of constant contact through mobile Internet and phones, venues tend to be black holes of service. So getting real information on what was going on outside was hard. Rumors circulated fast. Catanzaro says he wasn't sure what to believe, as there was talk that an actual bomb had exploded. "Everything was still going on as planned inside so we assumed, at least for the time being, that things were relatively under control. We figured that if detonation had occurred that the show would have probably already been shut down and the news would have been reporting it," he said. "Before the television in the back stage area started broadcasting live from outside the employees of the Nokia Theater were our main source of information. Once it was on the news, we walked upstairs and were told that if we walked outside, we wouldn't be able to get back in."

Many fans actually were still trying to get in, but the officers blocking the walk told everyone the show had been canceled. This of course wasn't true, as all the bands played without pause and with no talk of shutting down, which Catanzaro felt was the safest decision. "If they would have canceled the show, they would have had 1,500-2,000 people -- many of whom had been drinking -- coming out of the doors and flooding the streets of Times Square simultaneously without any idea of what was going on. Could have made things much worse."

According to Catanzaro, being so close to what could have been a horrific event in U.S. history has helped the members of the Ohio-based band see how easy someone with a destructive agenda can hurt innocent people. "Though on the opposite side of things, it also reinforced our belief that the people in uniform protecting this country -- both inside and outside of the borders -- are not only skilled enough to know how to handle potentially life threatening scenarios, but are also brave enough to engage them," he pointed out. "Seeing the separate emergency teams of N.Y.C. working together to resolve this situation was extremely inspiring and remains something we're eternally grateful for!

Woe of Tyrants embark on a tour with Entombed at the beginning of June.