Post-hardcore band, Silverstein is no stranger to selling out the House of Blues Anaheim, in Anaheim, California. Returning to another sold out crowd on their fourth time at this venue to celebrate their album “This Is How The Wind Shifts” turning 10 years old.
A film score is played as the lights dim, strings and an English narrator is heard over the monitors as the band walks out, opening the night with “Bad Habits”.
Hailing from Canada, the band consists of lead vocals from Shane Told, lead guitarist- Paul Marc Rousseau, rhythm guitarist- Josh Bradford, bass guitarist- Billy Hamilton and drums- Paul Koehler.
As cheers start to fade from the first song, there was no silence in between as cheers came back amplified as the second song starts to play with the iconic opening guitar riff for “Smile In Your Sleep”, transporting the crowd back to 2005’s, Discovering the Waterfront era.
Frontman, Told, draws the audience in with his powerful screams that have a layer of vocal fry to effortlessly transitioning to melodic singing, perfectly mixing into the explosive instrumentals the band was hammering out. As Told thanks the audience for their loyalty for the past 20 years, it drilled into me even more of how great they still sound live. I shamelessly still follow a lot of the bands I listened to as a teenager and I’ve noticed as these artists age with us, some of their vocals just can’t grasp what they used to be. This was not Told’s case, and I was blown away the whole night with how dynamic his voice continued to be.
“I want to see this place open up”, Told points to the crowd, as they understood it was time to open up a mosh pit. “You can do better than that”, Told continues as he parts the crowd even more. I’m about just under 5’2” on a good day but oh man, I knew I had to get into the pit for some epic photos. The evening was a surge of energy, as every moment was filled with mosh pits and crowd surfers.
The 24 song set list consisted of every song on the anniversary album, such as, “On Brave Mountain We Conquer” and “In Silent Seas We Drown”. Instead of taking the traditional route of playing the album from front to back, hits from other albums were sprinkled in between, such as, “Ultraviolet”, “My Heroine”, a cover of Linkin Park’s “One Stop Closer” and crowd voted surprise songs- “Your Sword Versus My Dagger” and “Smashed Into Pieces”.
“Every time we come back, it gets better and better. Thank you for tonight. Thank you for every night.”
