Somebody and/or something must have fanned the flames at the Raiders during the past off-season. The corps came onto the field significantly larger than their 2023 edition, indicating that recruitment went very well for this DCI Open Class corps. The corps also came onto the field with a look that made their show theme, Fan The Flame, apparent before a single note was played.
The show opened to the sounds of crackling fire before the percussion roared with a spark of their own. A solo mellophone brought the brass in with the opening melody of Ed Sheeran‘s Spark, with the rest of the brass joining in before the first full hit of the show at the chorus. This, at least according to the Drum Corps eXperience website, was the first use of Sheeran’s music in the drum corps activity, so the Raiders may also fan the flame of using his music more in future seasons. The percussion returned in full force as well as full size (including cymbals!) for a powerful feature during the next movement of the show, an original Michael Terry composition called Raging Out Of Control. This section of the show ended with sharp stabs from the brass line before transitioning into the next movement.
The Raiders’ take on Dimitri Shostakovitch‘s Fire of Eternal Glory was unique. Unlike previous uses of the composition in drum corps, the Raiders actually found a way to make it more Russian, in a sense, by performing the first half of the song in a minor key, almost as if the fire of this show had gotten out of control. We return to the major and much more hopeful key of the original for the final statement, as the corps triumphs over the fire.
This brings us to the closer, Billy Joel‘s We Didn’t Start the Fire. After a brief transition and intro, a baritone and a trumpet soloist trade off on the melody in a style that is more classical than rock, followed by the corps singing their own verse to the song, referring to the kinds of experiences one has during a drum corps season. A high energy drum corps finish ends the show with a fire that stayed hot throughout the show and lit the fuse for an even better season in 2025.
