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Motion City Soundtrack House of Blues Las Vegas Review | April 18, 2026
By Kris West
Most cities do not get a band in this exact condition. Motion City Soundtrack came into House of Blues Las Vegas on April 18 between Coachella weekends, already warm from Indio and headed straight back after this stop. Vegas got the middle stretch. That was a good place to catch them1I . This was festival energy packed into a club room.
House of Blues was built for a set like this. Motion City songs need bodies close to the stage, choruses bouncing off the ceiling, and enough room noise to keep the nerves in the songs alive. Justin Pierre still sounds best when there is a little scrape in the voice. Jesse Johnson still moves like the stage owes him money. The whole band played with speed and control, which is the sweet spot for Motion City. They have always done well when the songs sound half buttoned-up and half ready to spill.
The setlist was smart because it trusted both versions of the band. The new record, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, was not shoved into the background. Opening with “Some Wear a Dark Heart” and folding in “She Is Afraid,” “Particle Physics,” “You Know Who the Fuck We Are,” a song crafted with a live crowd in mind, and “Your Days Are Numbered” gave the night current blood. Then the older catalog came in waves: “Capital H,” “My Favorite Accident,” “Her Words Destroyed My Planet,” “A Lifeless Ordinary,” “Even If It Kills Me,” “Things Like This,” “L.G. FUAD,” “Point of Extinction,” “Attractive Today,” “Everything Is Alright,” and “The Future Freaks Me Out.” That is a strong run for any room.
The crowd did exactly what a Motion City crowd is supposed to do with a list like that. People still threw themselves into the hooks from “Capital H.” They still shouted “Everything Is Alright” with the right amount of denial in it. “The Future Freaks Me Out” still turned the room into a choir. By “L.G. FUAD,” the room still had plenty of people ready to shout “Let’s get fucked up and die” back at the stage, figuratively of course. Jesse still hit the keyboard handstand during “My Favorite Accident,” and the room gave it the reaction it deserves.
My ex was there with her new boyfriend, which was almost too perfect for a Motion City Soundtrack show.
That is part of why this band works so well in 2026. The songs mean more now because the crowd has more life on them. These are no longer songs people use to audition sadness. These are songs adults come back to after bad breakups, better breakups, rent hikes, lousy jobs, therapy, medication, kids, divorce, and the long dull paperwork of trying to stay functional. Motion City Soundtrack have aged into that space without sanding off the panic that made the songs useful in the first place.
That gives the whole show a different charge. A line from this band used to sound like a clever way to describe a mess. Now it sounds like something people already know by experience. The humor stays. The speed stays. The nerves stay. What changes is the weight behind them. The crowd brings more years. The songs absorb them.
Vegas got mid-Coachella energy and midlife singalong value at the same time. That is a strong combination. Motion City Soundtrack played House of Blues as a live band with a new record, a deep catalog, and a room full of people who still had plenty of use for both. The result was a fast, funny, slightly bruised set with real pulse in it from start to finish.
Motion City Soundtrack, House of Blues Las Vegas, Coachella 2026, Justin Pierre, Jesse Johnson, live review, Las Vegas concert review, emo, pop punk, alternative rock, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World
Motion City Soundtrack House of Blues Las Vegas Review | April 18, 2026
By Kris West
Most cities do not get a band in this exact condition. Motion City Soundtrack came into House of Blues Las Vegas on April 18 between Coachella weekends, already warm from Indio and headed straight back after this stop. Vegas got the middle stretch. That was a good place to catch them1I . This was festival energy packed into a club room.
House of Blues was built for a set like this. Motion City songs need bodies close to the stage, choruses bouncing off the ceiling, and enough room noise to keep the nerves in the songs alive. Justin Pierre still sounds best when there is a little scrape in the voice. Jesse Johnson still moves like the stage owes him money. The whole band played with speed and control, which is the sweet spot for Motion City. They have always done well when the songs sound half buttoned-up and half ready to spill.
The setlist was smart because it trusted both versions of the band. The new record, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, was not shoved into the background. Opening with “Some Wear a Dark Heart” and folding in “She Is Afraid,” “Particle Physics,” “You Know Who the Fuck We Are,” a song crafted with a live crowd in mind, and “Your Days Are Numbered” gave the night current blood. Then the older catalog came in waves: “Capital H,” “My Favorite Accident,” “Her Words Destroyed My Planet,” “A Lifeless Ordinary,” “Even If It Kills Me,” “Things Like This,” “L.G. FUAD,” “Point of Extinction,” “Attractive Today,” “Everything Is Alright,” and “The Future Freaks Me Out.” That is a strong run for any room.
The crowd did exactly what a Motion City crowd is supposed to do with a list like that. People still threw themselves into the hooks from “Capital H.” They still shouted “Everything Is Alright” with the right amount of denial in it. “The Future Freaks Me Out” still turned the room into a choir. By “L.G. FUAD,” the room still had plenty of people ready to shout “Let’s get fucked up and die” back at the stage, figuratively of course. Jesse still hit the keyboard handstand during “My Favorite Accident,” and the room gave it the reaction it deserves.
My ex was there with her new boyfriend, which was almost too perfect for a Motion City Soundtrack show.
That is part of why this band works so well in 2026. The songs mean more now because the crowd has more life on them. These are no longer songs people use to audition sadness. These are songs adults come back to after bad breakups, better breakups, rent hikes, lousy jobs, therapy, medication, kids, divorce, and the long dull paperwork of trying to stay functional. Motion City Soundtrack have aged into that space without sanding off the panic that made the songs useful in the first place.
That gives the whole show a different charge. A line from this band used to sound like a clever way to describe a mess. Now it sounds like something people already know by experience. The humor stays. The speed stays. The nerves stay. What changes is the weight behind them. The crowd brings more years. The songs absorb them.
Vegas got mid-Coachella energy and midlife singalong value at the same time. That is a strong combination. Motion City Soundtrack played House of Blues as a live band with a new record, a deep catalog, and a room full of people who still had plenty of use for both. The result was a fast, funny, slightly bruised set with real pulse in it from start to finish.
Motion City Soundtrack, House of Blues Las Vegas, Coachella 2026, Justin Pierre, Jesse Johnson, live review, Las Vegas concert review, emo, pop punk, alternative rock, The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World
Sleep Token turned a Utah arena date into something closer to initiation than a concert. Maverik Center, West Valley City, Utah — October 5, 2025
I drove eight hours from Las Vegas for Sleep Token.
The show had already started before I got there.
That is how this band operates now. Not with a standard rollout. Not with a clean press cycle. They build anticipation the way secret societies recruit. Symbols. Houses. Clues. Hidden pages. The Show Me How to Dance Forever campaign pulled fans into a puzzle before the tour ever hit the road, splitting them into factions and turning the build-up into participation instead of promotion. By the time the Utah date arrived, the room had already been activated.
You could see it outside Maverik Center.
People were there early. Very early. They were trading trinkets, planning outfits, meeting strangers, treating the parking lot and the line as part of the ritual instead of dead time before doors. The Utah fan thread for that night was full of the same energy: outfits, parking, meetups, gifts, logistics, anticipation. This band has built a community that behaves more like a congregation than a crowd.
The easy word is cult.
The more accurate word is organized devotion.
Sleep Token draws the kind of audience most heavy bands spend years trying to reach and never do. There were plenty of women there. Plenty of younger fans. Plenty of people who did not arrive through the usual metal pipeline. The room was broad without turning anonymous. The fanbase around this band has obsession in it, but it also has openness. That combination is harder to build than the masks, the lore, or the sigils.
It comes from the music.
Sleep Token writes songs that can turn on a dime without losing control. They can move from tenderness to punishment inside the same arrangement and make both sides land harder. There is sensuality in the material. There is weight in it. There is restraint. Then there is impact. A lot of heavy bands can switch dynamics. Sleep Token makes the switch itself part of the hook.
When the stage came up, the whole thing made sense.
The Even In Arcadia production was built as a stone world. Tiers. Ruins. Height changes. Banners. Water pouring from above. Not a generic arena backdrop. A full environment. The broader 2025 run introduced a giant waterfall effect, oversized sigils, floral detail, and a scale built for arenas and festival headlines rather than clubs or theaters. In Utah, the set read as a temple, a fortress, and a fantasy map all at once. Zelda architecture rebuilt for an arena floor.
Every player had a place inside it.
II elevated and framed separately. Espera above the main action. III and IV working the lower levels. Vessel at the center, moving through the architecture instead of simply standing in front of it. The production gave each part of the band a visual role without overcrowding the stage picture. Clean design. Smart use of height. Enough detail to build a world, not so much that it turned into clutter.
They opened with “Look to Windward.” Good choice. Long build. Controlled pressure. Then “The Offering” and “Vore” took the room from anticipation into force. That opening run did the job fast. Whatever lazy assumptions still exist about Sleep Token being an internet phenomenon first and a live band second do not survive contact with the room. The band sounded huge in Utah. Not vague. Not smoothed over. Huge. The low end had real weight. The guitars bit harder than they do on record. The whole set carried more punch than their studio precision suggests.
The middle of the set showed why the band has exploded.
That run covered almost everything they do well. Tension. Release. Hook writing. Atmosphere. Space. Crush. Seduction. Sleep Token understands contrast better than most bands working at this size. They know exactly when to strip a song down and exactly when to drive it into the floor.
Then “Caramel” arrived and sharpened the central contradiction around the whole band.
Four men in masks. Full costumes. Lore stacked on lore. A frontman who does not speak in the usual way and a fanbase that still projects unusual intimacy onto him. That is the trick they pulled off. Privacy on one side. Emotional access on the other. The masks create distance. The songs erase it. “Caramel” sits right inside that contradiction. Fame, projection, performance, self-protection. Watching that song land in a building full of people who clearly believe they know this band, even while knowing almost nothing concrete about them, gave it extra force.
Vessel came off genuine all night.
Not cold. Not swallowed by the character. Genuine.
That is a delicate line with a concept band. Too much detachment and the whole thing turns mechanical. Too much exposure and the mystique collapses. Sleep Token stays in the pocket. Vessel gives enough through voice, movement, and pacing to keep the human center intact. You never lose the sense that there is a real person inside all that structure, carrying songs that ask for real vulnerability while standing in full ceremonial armor.
The rest of the band looked comfortable together. Comfortable is the right word. Not stiff. Not overly choreographed. Not trapped inside the production. Comfortable enough to enjoy the scale of what they built and confident enough to let the songs carry the show. That chemistry is part of what keeps Sleep Token from collapsing under their own concept. Plenty of bands can invent mythology. Far fewer can stand inside it without looking ridiculous. This band can.
Then came the closing stretch.
“The Summoning” still hit as an event. The song has been memed, clipped, dissected, thirsted over, and run into the ground online, and it still landed live with real force. “Aqua Regia” cleaned the palette without draining the tension. “Granite” kept the pulse moving. “Thread the Needle” reached back and held up. “Damocles” and “Infinite Baths” closed the night on a note that suggested expansion rather than conclusion.
I didn’t leave impressed by the branding. I left impressed by the discipline. Every part of the night served the same purpose. The crowd arrived ready. The stage expanded the mythology without swallowing the band. The songs moved from tenderness to violence without wasting motion. Nothing in Utah suggested hype outrunning substance. Sleep Token earned that devotion.
The part that interests me most is where this goes next.
Sleep Token is already massive. Social media got them moving faster. TikTok pushed them into new rooms. Streaming numbers turned them into a broader phenomenon. None of that explains the live show by itself. The live show explains the rest. That is the proof. That is why an eight-hour drive from Las Vegas made sense. The songs held up. The production held up. The mystique held up. The audience held up their end too.
Utah made that clear.
This band is not leveling off. It is still climbing.
SEO Title 8 Hour Drive to Arcadia: Sleep Token in Utah Review
Meta Description An eight-hour drive from Las Vegas led straight into Sleep Token’s secret-society world as the band brought Even In Arcadia to Utah with a stage built like a temple and a crowd ready for ritual.
Tags Sleep Token, Even In Arcadia, Sleep Token Utah, Maverik Center, West Valley City, Vessel, concert review, live music, metal, alternative metal, Spiral Out Network
Children of the Korn Led a Night That Showed Why Tribute Bands Still Matter
House of Blues Las Vegas hosted an all-ages heavy bill on March 28 with Guerrilla Radio, Children of the Korn, Rose of Sharyn, and The Far Worst. It was the kind of lineup that gets dismissed too easily by people who only care about the original names on the poster. Being in the room, the point felt obvious. Tribute bands still serve a real purpose. They make this music reachable.
The real bands are bigger, more expensive, harder to get close to, and for a lot of people harder to bring kids into. A night like this cuts through all of that. You still get the riffs, the volume, the crowd response, and the songs people grew up on. You get a room full of parents passing that music down in real time. You get kids learning what these bands feel like in a live setting without the price tag and distance that usually come with legacy acts.
That was one of the strongest things about this show. There were plenty of kids there with parents who clearly came up on Korn, Rage, and Killswitch. That is part of what makes tribute nights worth paying attention to. They are not just nostalgia machines. They are entry points.
The whole bill worked from that angle. Guerrilla Radio brought the Rage Against the Machine side of the flyer, Rose of Sharyn carried the Killswitch Engage weight, and The Far Worst gave the night original local blood in between the tributes. The balance helped. It kept the show from turning into a costume exercise and gave the room a little variety in tone and texture.
Guerrilla Radio hit “Bombtrack,” which immediately gave the set some force. That song does not need a long runway. It lands fast, and the room reacted like it should. Rose of Sharyn brought in “The End of Heartache,” which was the right kind of pull for a bill like this. It widened the night beyond straight nü-metal and gave the lineup some metalcore lift.
Children of the Korn were the standout.
They opened with bagpipes, which is exactly the kind of move that tells the room they understand the assignment before the full band even kicks in. From there they pulled from different eras of Korn instead of leaning on the safest, most obvious version of the catalog. “Clown” brought in the dirtier early edge. “Coming Undone” gave the set a later-era hook that kept it from feeling boxed into one album or one generation of fans.
That mix mattered to the room in a practical way. Older fans got songs tied to the version of Korn they grew up with. Younger fans still had tracks they recognized. It made the set feel broader and more alive than a nostalgia run built only for one age group.
From where I was shooting, Children of the Korn felt like the biggest band on the bill. They had the strongest crowd response, the most complete energy, and the clearest sense of momentum. The songs hit with the right amount of grime and bounce, and the crowd stayed with them. Every band did well. They were the one that separated themselves.
That is the value of a show like this. It is not trying to replace the original thing. It is giving people access to the songs, the feeling, and the culture around them in a way that is local, affordable, and close enough to touch. For parents, it is an easier way to bring kids into heavy music. For younger fans, it is a way in. For photographers, it is a room where expressions still read, movement still matters, and the whole night is not swallowed by distance and security barricades.
House of Blues was the right room for it. Small enough to keep the energy concentrated. Big enough to let the bands hit with some weight. On a bill built around Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Killswitch Engage, and one hard rock band from Las Vegas carrying the original side of the night, the balance worked.
Children of the Korn left the deepest impression. More importantly, the whole night made a solid case for why tribute shows are still worth showing up for. They keep the songs moving. They keep younger crowds connected to the bands that shaped their parents. They make heavy music feel reachable again.
After Nine Inch Nails emptied the arena, Schism turned Triple B into an after-hours home for Tool fans still chasing the songs the real band rarely plays.
text Kris West March 28, 2026
Images by Kris West / Spiral Out Network
March 7 in Las Vegas turned into a two-show night for people with no interest in going home early. Nine Inch Nails played MGM Grand Garden Arena, and when that crowd spilled out, Schism took over Backstage Bar & Billiards — Triple B — for a midnight after-show aimed straight at the same kind of obsessive music fans who still had gas left in the tank. That setup is the clever part of Schism’s whole operation. They do not just tour as a Tool tribute band. They slide into town after bigger shows and catch the crowd while the adrenaline is still burning. I had seen them do it before after Tool. This time it was right after Nine Inch Nails, and it made perfect sense.
Schism is Tool fans’ side chick, the after-hours affair that gives you all the things the real relationship stopped giving you. Tool is still the wife, the obsession, the one you built your life around. Schism is the Hooker with a Penis fantasy made real — loud, dirty, funny, and more than happy to hand fans the deep cuts and old favorites they are probably never getting from Tool again.
The current singer is a big part of why that works. Nick Serr does not fall into the usual tribute-band trap of trying to do a stiff Maynard karaoke impression. He approaches the material in his own way, rougher around the edges and more direct, and that actually helps. The songs still hit like Tool songs, but the performance has its own pulse. It is raw in the right way, and in a room like Triple B that kind of delivery feels better than a hollow imitation ever could.
Schism has been doing this for a long time, tracing its history back to 2001, and they play like it. These are not guys getting by on bald caps, projected visuals, and audience goodwill. They can actually handle the material. Every odd accent, every weird time-signature turn, every metallic little detail, every stop-start shift that makes Tool songs feel like machinery built by lunatics is there. Tool is not easy music to fake. Schism does not fake it. They get inside it.
That is what makes them more than a novelty. The real band still has the scale, the mystique, and the authority of being the real thing. It also has a modern live show that stays pretty tightly controlled. Schism comes at the catalog from the opposite direction. They play a grueling two and a half hours and spend that time digging into the songs Tool fans still talk about like unfinished business. The value is not just that Schism sounds close to Tool. The value is that they play the songs people still want.
That matters when a set includes songs like “Lateralus,” “H.,” “Part of Me,” “Bottom,” and “Third Eye.” Those are not casual picks for people looking to hear the radio version of Tool. Those are songs with history, songs fans carry around for years because they know there is a decent chance the real band is never going to hand them over again. Schism understands exactly where that ache lives. They build the night around it.
The crowd at Triple B was fully with them. This was not some half-distracted bar crowd staring into drinks and waiting for a familiar chorus. The room was packed with believers. Tool fans are wired a certain way, obsessive to the point of comedy until you are standing in the middle of them and realize that obsession is the culture. That energy transfers cleanly to Schism. They are not filling stadiums, but they are filling the rooms they are supposed to fill, and they are getting people to sing, shout, and lock into every ugly left turn those songs make.
What Schism understands better than most tribute bands is appetite. Tool fans do not just want accuracy. They want access. They want the longer set, the heavier pull from older material, the songs that have slipped out of sight, the sense that somebody onstage still remembers the deeper corners of the catalog and treats them like they matter. That is the lane Schism owns, and on March 7 they owned it in a packed downtown room full of people who knew exactly why they were there.
After Nine Inch Nails finished across town, Schism gave Tool fans the part they usually do not get: the extra set, the deep cuts, the after-midnight version of the relationship. That is why the band works. It is not parody. It is not cosplay. It is a well-played, well-timed, fully self-aware answer to a real hunger inside this fanbase. For the people packed into Triple B that night, Schism was not a backup plan. Schism was the plan after the plan.
Tags: Schism, Tool tribute, Triple B, Backstage Bar & Billiards, Las Vegas, Nine Inch Nails, live review, Tool fans, Spiral Out Network
Peel It Back is a good title because it tells you what the show is doing before the band even starts. Not in some grand, mystical way. In a practical one. The production keeps removing distance, then adding it back, then stripping it away again. That is the real shape of the night. Nine Inch Nails brought the Peel It Back tour to the MGM Grand Garden Arena with Boys Noize opening and a two-stage setup that put part of the show in the middle of the floor and the rest on a larger main stage wrapped in translucent surfaces.
Boys Noize opened the night before Nine Inch Nails took the stage. His set included “Girl Crush,” “Revolt,” “Love & Validation,” “Down in It,” “Enjoy the Silence,” and “Euphoria.”
Then the structure of the show took over. The design uses a B-stage placed in the center of the arena floor, surrounded on all sides by the audience, and a main stage built out with translucent scrims and layered projection surfaces. It changes how the set breathes. The band begins inside the crowd, then moves outward into something larger, then returns to the center and collapses the space again. It gives the whole night a pulse without relying on the usual arena move of simply making everything bigger.
The first act opened on the B-stage with “(You Made It Feel Like) Home,” “Ruiner,” and “Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now).” Then the show shifted to the main stage for “Wish,” “March of the Pigs,” “The Frail,” “Reptile,” “Heresy,” “Copy of A,” and “Gave Up.” After that, the band returned to the B-stage, where Boys Noize folded directly into the set for “Vessel,” “Closer,” and “As Alive as You Need Me to Be.” The final act moved back to the main stage for “Mr. Self Destruct,” “Less Than,” “The Perfect Drug,” “I’m Afraid of Americans,” “The Hand That Feeds,” “Head Like a Hole,” and “Hurt.”
That sequence matters more than breaking down individual songs. The set keeps changing scale. The B-stage pulls Reznor and Ross into the crowd and removes distance. The main stage stretches the same energy across the room. Back and forth all night. Close. Wide. Close again. A lot of arena shows are built to prove how large they are. This one keeps adjusting how far away you are from it.
The visual system pushes that further. The production uses layered scrims, interior surfaces, side screens, and live camera feeds that create multiple versions of the same moment at once. You are not just watching the band. You are watching the band, then a delayed image of the same moment, then another version arriving somewhere else. The image never settles.
A handheld camera tracks the performance and feeds those angles back into the system. Sometimes the image lags. Sometimes it doubles. During “Copy of A,” that delay lines up with the repetition in the music. Multiple versions of the same figure, slightly out of sync.
The lighting follows the same logic. Red establishes the early palette. White cuts through it in hard bursts. Blue shifts the tone later without softening it. There are stretches where the band exists only as silhouettes behind the scrim, then the surface clears and the structure comes forward again. Nothing stays covered for long.
Josh Freese returned to Nine Inch Nails for this leg after Ilan Rubin moved to Foo Fighters. Freese had already held the role in earlier years. The playing is direct and consistent with the rest of the production. No extra emphasis. No variation from what the structure requires.
Boys Noize is not separated from the show. He is folded into it. The electronic material stays connected to the same framework rather than sitting off to the side.
The final stretch holds the same line. “Mr. Self Destruct,” “Less Than,” and “The Perfect Drug” maintain tension without expanding it into something larger. David Bowie’s “I’m Afraid of Americans” fits into the same structure instead of standing apart from it. “The Hand That Feeds” opens the space slightly, and “Head Like a Hole” pulls it back together.
“Hurt” closes the set without change. No extended arrangement. No added staging. The performance ends where the song ends.
The Nine Inch Nails logo remains above the stage after the lights drop. No projection layers. No camera feed. Just the frame left behind.
The sequence stays consistent from beginning to end: the room turns, the band appears inside it, the movement between stages continues, images split and delay across surfaces, the camera feed layers over the performance, Freese holds the drum position, Boys Noize stays integrated, Bowie sits inside the final run, and Reznor appears in multiple places at once—on stage, on screen, slightly offset.
Peel It Back runs as a system.
Distance changes.
Perspective shifts.
The image separates from the source.
By the end, there is no single version of what you are watching.
Las Vegas understands fake exclusivity better than any city in America. Velvet ropes. Guest lists. VIP sections full of men in bad watches pretending they invented appetite. The whole town runs on the idea that access means value.
Sessanta was different.
This was my second Sessanta show, and by then the novelty had worn off just enough for the real shape of it to come through. April 25, 2025. PH Live. Maynard’s birthday run had rolled back through town a year after the 60th-birthday concept launched, now stretched into 61 because apparently no one involved saw any reason to stop the party while it was still this good.
I got there early, like always. Some people pray. Some meditate. I show up too soon and stare at merch.
What hit me first was how insane the whole idea still is on paper. This thing traces back to Cinquanta, the two-night Greek Theatre celebration for Maynard’s 50th in 2014, when Puscifer, A Perfect Circle, and Failure rotated through one shared evening and kept bleeding into each other’s sets. A decade later, the concept had not gotten any less strange. If anything, it had become more dangerous because now it had survived long enough to prove it wasn’t a gimmick.
Three bands. One stage. No opener. No polite little reset while roadies drag amps around and everyone checks their phone. A few songs from one camp, then a handoff, then another, then the lines start going soft around the edges and the whole thing turns into a moving target. It sounds like the sort of idea people come up with after midnight when the drinks have been flowing and nobody sober is left to say no. Usually those ideas die for a reason.
This one lived because the talent was absurd and the egos, for once, seemed properly housebroken.
From the floor you could see the full architecture of the thing. Two levels. The lower deck was for whoever had the knife in their hand at that moment — singers, guitars, bass, the immediate business of the song. The upper level held three drum kits and seating areas on both sides, so the musicians who weren’t currently steering could sit up there, watch, laugh, listen, and wait. Nobody disappeared. Nobody retreated behind curtains to preserve the illusion. The wall between backstage and stage had been ripped out and left on the curb.
That is where the exclusivity came from.
Not celebrity. Not scarcity. Not collector-brain nonsense, though I am as guilty of that disease as anyone. It was exclusive because you were watching something the public is usually not allowed to see: great musicians acting like friends in public. Not “industry friends.” Real friends. The kind who know each other’s timing, know when to step in, know when to get out of the way, know when to laugh, and know how to make room. In a city built on fake intimacy, Sessanta offered the real thing and never once tried to sell it as luxury.
And look at who was in the room up there. Maynard. Carina Round. Mat Mitchell. Les Claypool. Larry LaLonde. John Hoffman behind Primus, stepping into a slot that is not exactly free of history. Billy Howerdel. Matt McJunkins. Josh Freese back behind A Perfect Circle. Too much musicianship in one frame. The kind of lineup that makes a lot of other tours look like paperwork.
The real miracle was that none of it tightened up or went stiff.
A Perfect Circle opened with “The Package,” “Disillusioned,” and “Blue,” and did what that band does best: make dread sound expensive. Primus came in right behind them with “Here Come the Bastards,” “Groundhog’s Day,” and “Duchess and the Proverbial Mind Spread,” which is about as subtle as being hit in the face with a bass neck wrapped in carnival wiring. Then Puscifer slid into “Man Overboard,” “Tiny Monsters,” and “Indigo Children,” and the room loosened into something stranger. From there the whole night started cross-pollinating the way Sessanta is built to do — “Little Lord Fentanyl,” “Bullet Train to Iowa,” “The Algorithm,” “The Doomed,” “The Humbling River,” “Judith,” “Southbound Pachyderm,” and finally “Grand Canyon” with the full cast on stage. Nobody defended borders. Songs got handed around like loaded objects.
And Vegas, of all places, was the right city for that kind of beautiful corruption.
Most big shows in this town feel engineered within an inch of their lives. Marks hit. Lights pop. Spectacle arrives on cue, clean and dead-eyed. Sessanta had a different pulse. There were projected skits. There was a birthday cake. There was Billy Howerdel and Hoffman playing ping-pong on stage like this was some deeply overqualified rec-room hallucination. There were musicians sitting on the second tier listening to each other play instead of vanishing the second the light moved off them. The whole thing played less like a concert and more like a private gathering that had somehow spilled into a theater without losing its chemistry.
That chemistry is the whole story.
Plenty of tours can assemble famous names. Fewer can create trust. That is what made this rare while it was happening, and rare is a word people abuse constantly. This was rare because it depended on human arrangement more than branding. The right bands. The right history. The right amount of humor. The right amount of menace. Too much self-importance and it collapses. Too much irony and it becomes a joke. Sessanta stayed right in the narrow, difficult lane where it could be funny, technically vicious, a little sentimental, and never soft in the head.
It also carried the right amount of age.
This was not a bunch of men trying to pretend time had not passed. It was better than that. It was people old enough, skilled enough, and comfortable enough to stop guarding every inch of turf. The original spark was a 50th-birthday show. Then 60. Then 61, because the first run worked too well and there were still cities left to hit. You only get so many chances to do something this strange before life, schedules, injuries, boredom, money, or simple common sense comes to shut the door.
By the last song, the whole thing finally gave itself away.
In the photo, everyone is still there. Three drummers across the upper tier. Singers and players spread across the front line. Red vertical lights behind them like lit fuses, votive candles, or the inside of some expensive desert cult. Yellow floor lamps burning at their feet. Smoke hanging in the room. The crowd reduced to silhouettes. By then, the audience was no longer the main event. We were there to witness it.
By the time “Grand Canyon” closed it out, the whole idea had landed with full weight. Not a novelty. Not a package tour. Not three brands sharing square footage for the sake of commerce. It was a temporary society. A private club with the roof torn off. A backstage hang turned outward for one night in a city that usually counterfeits that feeling and charges extra for it.
I liked that each band had its own poster. I liked even more that there was a giant all-in-one signed print big enough to count as evidence. That made sense. Nights like this make people want proof. Not because they need memorabilia. Because they need corroboration. Vegas merch for that night included exclusive items tied to the PH Live stop.
Second Sessanta show.
This was the one where the whole machine quit looking like a clever concept and started looking like what it really was: a rare piece of trust, built by lifers, carried by monsters, and dressed up as a birthday party so nobody had to admit how unlikely it was.
Poster
Dave Kloc — All-show print
Ken Taylor — Puscifer
Dido Peshev — A Perfect Circle
Brian Allen / Flyland Designs — Primus
Field Notes
Second Sessanta show Arrived early PH Live, Las Vegas Born from the 2014 Cinquanta idea, still alive a decade later Three bands on one stage, all night Upper tier turned backstage into public view Birthday cake, skits, ping-pong, ridiculous amount of talent Vegas got a genuinely exclusive show for once
Setlist Highlights
A Perfect Circle — “The Package,” “Blue,” “Judith” Primus — “Here Come the Bastards,” “Groundhog’s Day,” “Southbound Pachyderm” Puscifer — “Man Overboard,” “Bullet Train to Iowa,” “The Humbling River” Finale — “Grand Canyon”
Tags
Sessanta V2.0, Sessanta Las Vegas, Sessanta V2.0 review, A Perfect Circle live, Puscifer live, Primus live, PH Live Las Vegas, Maynard James Keenan, Carina Round, Les Claypool, Larry LaLonde, John Hoffman, Billy Howerdel, Josh Freese, concert review, Las Vegas concert review, Spiral Out Podcast
Suggested Image Alt Text
A Perfect Circle, Puscifer, and Primus share the stage during the final song at Sessanta V2.0 in Las Vegas, framed by red vertical lights and smoke.
Columbus, Ohio — A weekend of kings watching kings
Tool, Deftones, Puscifer, KISS, and the emotional return of the Foo Fighters made Sonic Temple 2023 one of the most memorable rock festival weekends in recent memory
In 2023 I made the pilgrimage to Sonic Temple Festival in Columbus, Ohio, a city that sits at a strange intersection of music history.
The home of The Shawshank Redemption. And the place where Dimebag Darrell was murdered on stage.
Rock history lives there in strange ways.
Sonic Temple is a multi day festival run by the same people behind Louder Than Life in Louisville, Kentucky and Aftershock in Sacramento, California. They know how to run a rock festival. The logistics are tight, the lineup is massive, and the crowds show up ready to lose their voices.
This particular trip, I decided to be a little gluttonous.
Instead of roughing it like a normal festival rat, I splurged on the top tier VIP package. The kind where the financial damage happens up front, but after that everything becomes smooth sailing: free food, free drinks, shaded lounges, and comfortable seats for all three days.
It was wildly expensive.
And absolutely worth it.
Three days of rock and roll with unlimited food and drinks.
That is not a festival.
That is rock and roll aristocracy.
But the real reason I was there was the lineup.
For one weekend some of my favorite bands were all sharing the same bill: Tool, Puscifer, and Deftones, along with bucket list acts I had somehow never seen like KISS and Rob Zombie.
And then there was the big one.
Foo Fighters.
This would be their first major show back after the devastating death of drummer Taylor Hawkins. For a while there was real doubt about whether the band would even continue.
Then the announcement came.
Josh Freese.
For people who follow drummers, that name carries serious weight.
Freese is arguably one of the greatest modern rock drummers alive. His résumé reads like a crash course in alternative music history: Nine Inch Nails, A Perfect Circle, Devo, The Vandals, Weezer, and studio sessions for more records than anyone can reasonably keep track of.
If rock music needed a utility player who could walk into any band and immediately deliver at the highest level, Josh Freese was always the answer.
He also happens to be responsible for some of the funniest Instagram posts on the internet.
So the math worked out like this.
A Perfect Circle drummer.
Playing with a childhood favorite band.
At a festival where Tool and Puscifer were also performing.
I didn’t really have a choice.
I had to be there.
Day One — Tool
The weekend began with Tool. They played what you could call their bread and butter set, but when the bread and butter includes songs like Stinkfist, 46 and 2, and The Pot, nobody complains. They also played Invincible, which has one of the best live breakdowns of any modern rock song.
As someone whose creative life has been heavily shaped by that band, I’ll just admit it plainly.
They were great.
Maynard James Keenan had noticeably high energy that night, possibly fueled by the knowledge that one of his favorite bands, KISS, would be playing the same weekend. The band sounded tight, confident, and locked into the sound they have spent decades refining.
Day Two — Rob Zombie
Day two kicked off with Rob Zombie, a performer I had somehow never seen live.
You get exactly what you expect musically: Living Dead Girl, Dragula, the hits.
But the real attraction is the stage show.
Giant robots. Alien monsters. A full B movie horror circus happening behind the band.
I do wish they had waited until dark for the set because the visuals would have been even better, but seeing Rob Zombie headbang next to a giant robot on stage is still something I’m glad I got to witness.
Puscifer
Next came Puscifer, Maynard’s wonderfully strange side project.
They were touring on Existential Reckoning, and the show might be one of the most theatrical live performances in modern rock. The entire set feels like performance art mixed with satire.
Synchronized dancers. Aliens. Men in Black style characters appearing throughout the show.
And at the center of it all is Carina Round.
Her voice floats above the chaos with a haunting beauty that feels almost otherworldly. Watching her perform live adds a whole new dimension to the music. There is a grace and intensity to her presence that pulls the entire show into a different emotional space.
Puscifer is something Tool cannot be.
Where Tool is disciplined and intense, almost sacred in its seriousness, Puscifer is playful, sensual, theatrical, and strange. It allows Maynard to explore places musically and emotionally that Tool simply cannot reach.
It is satire. It is melody. It is performance art.
And somehow it still sounds incredible live.
KISS
Then came KISS.
A band I never thought I really needed to see live.
Until I saw them live.
Suddenly I felt like I had stepped directly into the movie Detroit Rock City.
Gene Simmons was doing the full Gene Simmons routine: spitting blood, wagging that enormous tongue, breathing fire like some ancient demon summoned directly from the seventies.
Paul Stanley, still somehow half rock god and half motivational speaker, flew across the crowd on a zipline while delivering speeches about the eternal power of rock and roll.
It was theatrical. Absurd. Completely over the top.
And I am very glad I got to see it before they finally shut the whole machine down.
But the strangest moment of the night happened off to the side of the stage.
Standing there quietly.
Watching.
Maynard James Keenan.
Watching one of your favorite singers watch his favorite singer is a strange experience. Watching a person who influenced you watch the person who influenced them.
A spiral.
Very Tool.
Deftones
Next came the Deftones, arguably one of the greatest bands ever.
Earlier in the day I had the chance to go backstage and briefly meet a few of the guys, including Steph Carpenter. His calm, relaxed demeanor stands in perfect contrast to how crushingly heavy the band can sound.
Deftones live on this cliff edge between brutal heaviness and melodic beauty.
They’ve been occupying space in my ears since I was about fourteen years old. They are a band I have lived a lot of life alongside.
They’ve never been a massive radio band the way some of the other festival acts were. They never relied on a string of huge mainstream hits.
And yet they still draw massive crowds.
Because their fans know every word.
Soft songs. Heavy songs.
Does not matter.
Deftones feel like something sacred.
Like they belong to the fans.
Not the industry.
Ours.
Day Three — Foo Fighters
Finally it was time.
Foo Fighters.
The album The Colour and the Shape practically lived in my CD player during middle school, but the band toured so constantly that I always assumed I would eventually see them somewhere by accident.
Then Taylor Hawkins died.
And suddenly I realized I had made a mistake.
I had passed up dozens of chances to see them.
I had accepted the possibility that I might never see the Foo Fighters.
Then came the announcement.
They were coming back.
Starting with Sonic Temple.
And behind the drum kit would be Josh Freese.
An odd pairing on paper.
But an exciting one.
The band launched into their set with the energy of a group reclaiming something. They have so many radio hits that even if you have never listened to a Foo Fighters album front to back, you still know half the songs.
But I was there for three moments.
My Hero.
Performed first with just guitar as a dedication to radio legend Matt Pinfield, standing on the side stage. Quiet at first, then slowly building until the band exploded exactly when the emotion demanded it.
Then Monkey Wrench, an older hit with massive harmonies and one of those choruses that thousands of people can scream together without missing a word.
The nostalgia monster was eating well.
And then the moment I had been waiting for.
Everlong.
One of the greatest songs of the modern era. A song I had waited nearly thirty years to hear live.
And when it finally happened, it was everything I hoped it would be.
Everlong is haunting. Beautiful. Complicated.
A love song.
And somehow also a goodbye.
Standing there hearing it live, after everything that band had gone through, carried a weight far beyond the music.
It was magic.
The Weekend
The entire weekend was pure self indulgence.
And I did not feel guilty about it for a second.
I had worked hard. I bought the ticket. And for three days I lived like rock and roll royalty.
Great seats. Backstage access. Free food and drinks.
My favorite bands playing one after another.
I watched the kings of rock perform.
And at times I watched the kings of rock watch the kings who came before them.
There was something cyclical about the whole experience. Artists inspiring artists. Generations passing the torch. Influence spiraling outward.
It was a strange and perfect weekend.
Exactly what I wanted it to be.
If you enjoyed this festival write-up, there’s more where this came from.
Spiral Out Podcast explores the men and women behind your favorite bands. From the artists that design the show posters, technicians that bring the concerts experience life, directors who’ve shot the music videos, collectors. We talk to anyone who has had a part in all that great music, movies and art that has enhanced your life over the years.
Spiral Out Podcast Long conversations with musicians, artists, collectors, and creatives about the stuff that actually matters.
This Movie Tastes Like Music A video series traveling the intersection of food, music, film, and art.
Reel Sick Podcast Film talk with Kris, Dylan, Jim, and Casey — loud opinions, cult classics, and new releases.
Apoptosis A man moves through a strange and unraveling world, haunted by a phone that will not stop ringing.
About Kris West
Kris West is a Las Vegas-based filmmaker, photographer, chef, media producer, and the architect behind Spiral Out Network — a creative platform living at the intersection of music, film, food, and art.
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