Show Review: The Disobedient Tour feat. Stick To Your Guns, The Amity Affliction, Being As An Ocean, ’68, and In Hearts Wake at The Palladium in Worcester, MA

Photos & Words by Nathan Katsiaficas

Fresh off of the release of their new record, Disobedient, Stick To Your Guns are back on tour in the US, headlining the Disobedient Tour, which features direct support from Australian metalcore heavyweights, The Amity Affliction, with Being As An Ocean, ’68, and In Hearts Wake rounding out a relatively diverse lineup. I caught the tour as it made its way to the Palladium in Worcester, MA on a cold, snowy Saturday evening. Despite the crappy weather, several hundred fans had turned out and already packed into the venue, where an upstairs stage was playing host to several local acts.

After those acts had finished, In Hearts Wake took to the dimly-lit downstairs stage to open things up, kicking things off with “Earthwalker,” which features a cameo from The Amity Affliction’s Joel Birch. I’m not sure if he has on other nights of the tour, but Joel didn’t join the band onstage on this night for the song. For an opener, In Hearts Wake did well to get the audience pumped up and moving early-on in the night.

As the audience waited for noise rock/post-hardcore duo ’68 to finish setting up, it seemed like many in attendance were not so enthusiastic about there being a two-piece band on the tour. Luckily, those folks were quickly educated in the chaotic awesomeness that is ’68, and soon the whole crowd was having a blast. Guitarist and vocalist Josh Scogin and drummer Michael McClellan put on a hell of a show, especially Scogin, who launched his poor guitar 10+ feet in the air several times during the set and towards the end of the set, scaled McClellan’s drums, perching on his bass drum and hi-hat stand. While their set was fairly short, it was a blast from start to finish and definitely won them a lot of new fans!

The bands seemed to keep raising the bar with each set, and while ’68 had set that bar pretty high, Being As An Ocean were more than able to follow, in fact, they put on a performance that nearly upstaged the remaining acts to follow. When ranking live performances, I tend to use a scale of Nickelback to letlive, where the former is complete crap, boring, and awful, and the latter is the unachievable pinnacle of what a high-energy live set should be like—unachievable thus far by any band that I’ve seen other than letlive, until now. I think I may need to adjust my ranking system because Being As An Ocean may be the craziest, most high-energy, fan-engaging live act I’ve ever seen. Within the first song, vocalist Joel Quartuccio was up on the barricade, letting fans help sing and getting up close to fans in the front row. He was up on the barrier at least once during nearly every song in their set, at one point stage diving across a 4 to 5 foot gap into the crowd, only to head back into the crowd minutes later, mic in tow, to perform a song from one of several mosh pits that had opened up. Highlights of their set included “Mediocre Shakespeare,” “The Hardest Part Is Forgetting Those You Swore You Would Never Forget,” and “Dear G-D.” The band closed their set with “This Loneliness Won’t Be the Death of Me.” Being As An Ocean alone is worth seeing this tour for, but if you can’t make it out to a date, they’ll be playing on Vans Warped Tour all summer long—I know I can’t wait to see them again!

It should’ve been hard for The Amity Affliction to follow such a crushing set, but led by frontman Joel Birch, they rose to the occasion. The band launched into their their nine-song set with the fan-favorite “Pittsburgh” off of their 2014 release Let the Ocean Take Me. Their set definitely had the most sing-alongs, crowd surfing and all-around insanity from the crowd of any of the performances that night, with Birch letting several fans who had surfed up to the front help sing, and even throwing the mic to fans in the front row several times. Few bands involve their fans like The Amity Affliction do, so it was cool to see the excitement of these lucky kids up close. Their set went on to feature other new songs, including “The Weigh Down” and “Don’t Lean on Me,” but also featured older hits like “Greens Avenue” and “Open Letter.”

By the time The Amity Affliction left the stage, both the crowd and the security staff were visibly exhausted, but everyone managed to pull through for one last set from headliners Stick to Your Guns. The band emerged from a cloud of fog, illuminated by strobes and police lights as sirens wailed from the sound system, and launched into “Nobody,” their first single off their latest release, Disobedient. They continued, almost without pausing, into “Empty Heads” off of 2012’s Diamond. Frontman Jesse Barnett leapt around the stage, belting out every pissed-off word with flawless delivery. As the first notes to the song, “Amber” rang out, Barnett screamed to the audience “What’s her name? Tell me her name! What’s her name?” with the audience responding by screaming along the opening line, “Her name is Amber!” At which point, the whole floor seemed to explode into a sea of flying bodies and moshing from wall to wall. This continued through much of their set, which went on to feature many well-loved tracks including “Bringing You Down,” “Built Upon the Sand,” “The Bond,” “We Still Believe,” and “What Goes Around.” They closed their set with an encore of “Diamond” and “Against Them All,” leaving a sweaty, but satisfied audience to file out into the cold snowy night.

You can catch the Disobedient Tour through March 8^th, the remaining dates are included after the photos below!