Spiritbox w/ Loathe, Dying Wish Wellmont Theater, Montclair, NJ

Spiritbox’s ascendance within the current realm of popular metal music has been thrilling to watch. In just a few short years, the band has embarked on numerous sold-out headliner tours throughout the globe, opened for rock mainstays like Korn, Shinedown, and Ghost, and garnered multiple Grammy nominations. They've even expanded outside of the traditional norms of what metal music can accomplish with their remix of “Cobra” originally done by Megan Thee Stallion in 2023, as well as a crossover with Illenium on the track “Shivering.” Spiritbox’s latest record Tsunami Sea feels like the culmination of their progressive metal sound honed to an accessible yet still crushing magnitude thanks to the crossover of Mike Stringer’s djent-style guitar riffs and Courtney LaPlante’s dynamic vocal range. The quartet have also leveled up on their lyrical precision, with the usage of a devastating tsunami acting as a throughline for a discussion on mental health. As their songwriting skills have improved, Spiritbox’s audience has grown with them, which is how I found Spiritbox gazing upon a sold-out crowd at the 2500-cap Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ.

If there's anything you could count on with the Spiritbox show, it's their high production value. Much like they're set up for the Eternal Blue tour about two years ago, the group stood in front of two massive screens which played a blend of mind-bending animations and real-life footage from preset cameras onstage. Courtney is just as great live as she’s always been, delivering studio-quality screams while calmly walking throughout the monolithic structure of screens behind her. The group stuck to mainly Tsunami Sea tracks, but they also managed to pack a lot of their discography from the last four years, including the entirety of the Rotoscope EP, “Jaded” and “The Void” from The Fear Of Fear, and select singles from Eternal Blue. 

It felt like the crowd was engaged from beginning to end, and I got the feeling that no matter what Spiritbox played, the audience would have responded the exact same way. You can stream Tsunami Sea on Spotify and Apple Music.

Acting as direct support for the Tsunami Sea tour was the Liverpool based group Loathe. It's been over five years since Loathe’s latest record I Let It In And It Took Everything which has become a newer classic in the genre thanks to its unique blend of metal, shoegaze, and atmospheric elements. However, instead of opening with a song from this beloved masterpiece, Loathe decided to treat the audience to an as of now unreleased song. The track plays to many of the group’s strengths with heavily downtuned guitars underscoring Kadeem France’s visceral screams and refraining for the lighter singing of Erik Bickerstaffe. The group played many of the juggernauts from I Let It In such as black-metal adjacent cut “Heavy Is The Head That Falls With The Weight Of A Thousand Thoughts” in contrast with the one-two punch of melodic tracks “Is It Really You” and “Two Way Mirror,” the latter of which brought on an enormous amount of crowdsurfers.

Every time Loathe comes through the area, I make sure to check them out, and if you haven’t already done so, now is a perfect time to start diving into their work before they gear up on a new release cycle. You can check out their discography on Spotify and Apple Music.

Opening up the evening was Portland-based hardcore outfit Dying Wish. The group has been aggressively touring for the last four years, opening for the likes of all sorts of bands from The Devil Wears Prada to Limp Bizkit. While an all gas, no brakes approach might prove to be the downfall for some bands, in the case of Dying Wish it does the exact opposite. Their live shows have only gotten better since the first time I saw them open for Motionless in White in 2021. Touring off of their recently released single “I Brought You My Soul (Your World Brought Me Despair),” the band stormed through most of the tracks from their latest record Symptoms of Survival with a few select passages from their breakout record, Fragments of a Bitter Memory. At any given moment, there was either a massive pit going or a member of the band yelling at the audience to start something. The band’s hard-hitting sound was a perfect way to kick off the night in New Jersey.

Coming from someone who has seen the band seven times now, you have to show up to the Dying Wish show to really see how great this band is. You can check out their latest single on Spotify and Apple Music.

While it can seem like rock and metal music hasn’t reached the commercial highs of the early to mid 2000s, the Tsunami Sea tour is an excellent example of what’s possible in this new era. It feels like Spiritbox has become one of the flag bearers for this new era of heavier music alongside bands like Bad Omens, Sleep Token, and Lorna Shore, and I’m very thankful for their popularity spike, as the quality of their music and their live shows is top-notch. Spiritbox is halfway through the Tsunami Sea tour, and while many of the remaining shows are sold out, there is a possibility for tickets to show up through Ticketmaster’s face value resale. I highly recommend keeping your eyes peeled, because this show was one you will remember for a while.