The North American leg of the Alternative Press 2016 World Tour began February 10th in Montreal, Quebec, with plans to travel throughout parts of Canada and the US by the end of March. State Champs and Neck Deep are co-headlining the tour, accompanied by Knuckle Puck and Like Pacific. All four bands recently released new albums: Around the World and Back, by State Champs, Life’s Not Out to Get You, by Neck Deep, Copacetic, by Knuckle Puck, and Distant Like You Asked, by Like Pacific.
The four bands were scheduled to perform at the Observatory in Santa Ana on February 27th, and by the evening of the concert, every ticket was sold out. Hundreds of teenagers and adults, clad in black jeans, band tees and flannel jackets packed themselves tightly into the room. The concert hadn’t even begun, and already people were sweating, uncomfortably pressed against each other. However, everyone in the room was smiling and talking, excitedly discussing their expectations for the night. Every couple of seconds, phones were being pulled out of pockets to check the time, every person silently willing the clock to move faster. Finally, at 6:30 p.m., the concert began.
Canadian punk band Like Pacific took the stage first, and the floor went wild with the first guitar riff. The crowd surged forward with the force of a receding tsunami, taking everyone and everything with it. The main pit, which once held 75 individuals, was now packed with over two hundred people jumping and shouting out lyrics. By the second song, a mosh pit had formed. The packed floor was an undulating mass of writhing individuals shoving and slamming their bodies into anything in their path. Those on the fringe of the mosh pit found themselves forcibly pressed into the walls enclosing the area. Those people were both watching the concert and fearing for their lives. Like Pacific’s set consisted of mostly of songs from Distant Like You Asked, but they also included older hits like “Suffering,” “Clarity,” and “Sigh of Relief.”
The second band to perform was Knuckle Puck, a punk band from Chicago. They performed songs “Disdain,” “Pretense,” “Evergreen,” “True Contrite,” and “Swing,” from their newest album Copacetic, as well as their older popular songs like “No Good,” “In My Room,” and “But Why Would You Care?” Midway through their set, frontman Joe Taylor discussed the making of their latest album, saying that they weren’t sure what direction to take with it, but all they knew was that they “wanted it to be copacetic, because at the end of it all, everything is good. No matter how bad things get in life, you wake up in the morning, and you’re alive and you can open your eyes and you’re breathing, and everything is copacetic.”
The first headlining act of the concert was State Champs, a New York based pop-punk band. They kicked off their set performing “Breaking Ground,” from Around the World and Back. They continued to play songs from their newest album, with hits such as “Eyes Closed,” “Secrets,” “All You Are Is History,” “Perfect Score,” “All or Nothing,” and “Tooth and Nail.” Derek Steez, the lead singer explained that he asked fans to request the songs they performed during this tour, and because of that fans got to hear some older songs played live. Some of the older songs they played were “Elevated,” “Hard To Please,” “Remedy,” “Critical,” and “Easy Enough,” and played “If I’m Lucky,” from their album The Acoustic Things.
The last set of the night was Neck Deep, a Welsh pop-punk band. They played almost the entirety of their newest album, Life’s Not Out to Get You. Among the plethora of songs they played “Gold Steps,” “Can’t Kick Up The Roots,” and a full-band version of “December.” The crowd went wild during their performance of “Serpents,” and they played songs from their first and second albums, like “Growing Pains,” and “Losing Teeth.”
After the show, fans were breathless, sweaty, and had hoarse voices. As one fan said as he exited the building, “If there was a way to turn sweat into drinkable water, we would have cured the California drought tonight.”