Photo Credit: Brianna Griepentrog
The excitement couldn’t be contained as mosh pits, crowd surfers and compulsive finger pointers took over during New Found Glory’s performance at The Rave/Eagles Club on Saturday, June 22. Accompanying the pop-punk masterminds were Illinois pop-punk sensation Real Friends, post-hardcore act The Early November and punk-rock supergroup Doll Skin. Each of these bands delivered much-needed adrenaline and power to the Rave Hall as both old fans and young punks took over the dance floor.
Photo Credit: Brianna Griepentrog
New Found Glory’s reputation for putting on excellent shows is well-deserved. While playing energetic punk with fast tempos and power chord shifts, their lyrics stayed bright and catchy. NFG played their early 2000s hits, songs from their 2017 album Makes Me Sick and a series of covers. In between songs, the crowd was pleased with the band’s inside jokes and the bags of freshly popped popcorn that were prepared on (and thrown off) stage.
The theme of New Found Glory’s set was a Hollywood-style movie theater, with signs, spotlights and a popcorn machine. Amps were covered in colorful floral patterns and the words “Milwaukee, WI” showed on a glowing marquee in the background. In their usual playful fashion, the band opened with a cover of “Eye of the Tiger” and then dipped into “Understatement” to get the crowd going. In between his energetic bouncing, frontman Jordan Pundik went through a series of costume changes, including a red-white-and-blue boxer’s robe and shorts, a ringmaster’s coat and an Elsa costume for a pop-punk cover of “Let It Go.”
Though New Found Glory mastered in their showmanship, Real Friends had, in a sense, stolen the show before them with their captivation of the audience. This was marked by successfully putting on a “wall of death,” where the mosh pit split up into two sides and charged each other at the height of a song. With some encouragement by Real Friends’ frontman Dan Lambton, the pit after the wall of death turned into a flurry of pushing, pogoing and spins. Despite the initial chaos Real Friends started, they quelled the hall with some mellow songs towards the end of their set.
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The Early November excited its circle of devout fans with songs like “Decoration” and “Tell Me Why.” Arthur “Ace” Enders’ vocal presence was huge, and his shout at the height of one song managed to reach the back of the room without the help of his microphone. Between songs, he reminisced about his previous shows with The Early November at the band and made the crowd laugh with some jokes.
Doll Skin, an all-female punk-rock band that echoed rebellion from decades of punk bands before them, started the anarchy by breaking the no moshing rule with a circle pit that went around the singer after she had climbed into the audience. Each of the bands that played that night complemented each other in some way, whether in sound or style, and each of them received a lot of love from the crowd there.
