Concerts Reviews
Spiritbox Turns Vancouver Into A Tsunami Sea
May 6th marked a highly anticipated moment for metal fans in Vancouver, the return of Spiritbox. The “hometown” heroes, originally from Victoria, BC, performed their Tsunami Sea Tour to a nearly sold-out PNE Forum. The tour celebrates Tsunami Sea, Spiritbox’s sophomore studio album which released this past March to rave reviews. As a longtime fan, the announcement of the Forum as the tour stop felt significant as it signaled the group had grown exponentially since their last show in the city in 2023 at the Commodore Ballroom. Their impressive trajectory comes to no fan’s surprise as the past few years have been nothing but an uphill climb. From multiple Grammy nominations to major festival appearances, and most recently, Courtney LaPlante’s performance alongside Megan Thee Stallion at Coachella, Spiritbox has firmly established themselves as a major force in the modern music world.
Well before doors opened, hundreds, if not thousands, of fans wrapped around the Forum’s walls. Many of whom were spotted sporting Eternal Blue era merch, which was soon to be joined by Tsunami Sea designs. Once doors opened, energy surged immediately. The merch lines filled quickly, and fans rushed toward the barricade to secure the closest possible spot to the stage. Even for myself, a sense of energy blasted like lighting as my near six month wait for the show was finally ending. The night kicked off with a behemoth trio of opening acts: Poor Sport, Dying Wish, and LOATHE.
Poor Sport and Dying Wish tag-teamed the night with back-to-back sonic uppercuts, ramping up the chaos. Circle-pits were whirlwinds and heads banged with powerful fury. Once the baton was passed to Liverpool juggernauts LOATHE, the fuse hit the powder, and Vancouver erupted. As their set opened with “Gifted Every Strength”, a brooding atmosphere settled over the Forum. The only light came from the moody side-stage fixtures, like a prelude to a storm. Like lightning, LOATHE yanked the crowd into a whirlpool of distortion and disarray, shifting the energy from slow burn to full detonation. Vocalist Kadeem France and co. delivered a rollercoaster of emotion and brutality across an 8-song set that made one thing clear, this performance was a statement.
“Hello Vancouver! We’ve been waiting so long to say that,” Kadeem declared mid-set, signalling the band’s long-overdue debut in the city. Fans, some of whom had waited nearly a decade for this moment, responded in erupting cheers, especially during cult-favourites “Two-Way Mirror” and “Is It Really You?”. If this was anyone’s first time seeing LOATHE, they probably walked out a fan. If they were already one, they walked out grinning. Either way, the Liverpool prog-metal crew left their mark, and thankfully, it won’t be long until round two, as they return this October. This time, at Vancouver’s staple venue Rogers Arena, as they’ll be opening for none other than metal gods Korn.
Though only minutes passed between LOATHE and Spiritbox, it felt like the air itself was holding its breath. Around me, fans swapped stories, revisiting earlier sets, reliving Spiritbox’s last time in town, and speculating nervously about what might unfold. The room buzzed with a tension that no stage light could touch. Then, just after 9 p.m., the lights dimmed and time snapped back into motion. A low, pulsing bass crept in like a heartbeat, and on screen, an image of a burning ship appeared. That was the moment the crowd went silent, the collective anticipation crashing inward. This was it, the moment we’ve waited months for finally arrived.
The set kicked off with “Fata Morgana,” the opening track from Tsunami Sea, and Spiritbox wasted no time. Guitarist Mike Stringer, bassist Josh Gilbert, and drummer Zev Rose unleashed a tidal wave of sound, distorting the stage with unapologetic force. With it, fans answered by turning the Forum floor into a literal Tsunami Sea of crowd-surfers. While the instrumental trio held command, it was singer Courtney LaPlante’s arrival that detonated the room. One moment, anticipation; the next, ignition. A single line, “Sorrow follows me” ripped through the atmosphere, and with it, Vancouver surrendered their sanity.
Courtney’s vocals defy easy description, guttural and feral one moment, hauntingly angelic the next. On tracks like “Soft Spine”and “Holy Roller,” her screams felt ripped from another dimension, only to dissolve into ethereal tones of chilling beauty. It’s this duality, violence and grace, that sets her apart in the metal world. The night’s 16-track setlist was a showcase of the band’s evolution while celebrating their latest release, Tsunami Sea. Spiritbox left little room for breath as they moved with intention through their catalog, each track bleeding seamlessly into the next. Fan-favourites like “No Love, No Loss,” “Secret Garden,” and “Jaded”drew thunderous reactions. Visually, the black-and-white aesthetic of Tsunami Sea took center stage, and transformed the Forum into a monochrome fever dream. At times, the stage visuals verged on eerie, even nightmarish, casting an almost horror-film filter over the performance. Spiritbox’s set wasn’t without its surprises, with two standout guest appearances that elevated an already electrifying performance.
Midway through the night, Noah Edwards of Poor Sport took the stage to join Courtney on vocals for “Circle With Me,” giving the fan-favourite track an added jolt of intensity. Later, Jessie Grace of Don’t Deserve A Grave stepped in for “No Love, No Loss,” her contribution added grit to the already hard-hitting number. While LaPlante’s vocal versatility was front and centre throughout the night, guitarist Mike Stringer delivered a standout performance of his own. Nowhere was this more evident than on “Black Rainbow,” where his precision and force cut through the venue like a blade. Working in perfect tandem with drummer Zev and bassist Josh, the trio built a breakdown that felt cinematic in scale. A thunderous, tightly-wound moment that echoed the intensity of Mick Gordon’s Doom soundtrack.
Spiritbox closed the night with “Ride the Wave,” a track that began with a haunting elegance reminiscent of Evanescence’s The Open Door era, before erupting into a thunderous, full-scale finale. The crowd, far from weary, left the venue visibly buzzing, many already clamouring for more. For a band known for intensity, Spiritbox exceeded even their own reputation, delivering a performance many fans were calling flawless.
With Tsunami Sea representing what may be the band’s most cohesive and ambitious work to date, expectations for this show were sky-high. Yet, by the final note, those expectations were obliterated. The set was sharp, emotionally charged, and showcased a band fully stepping into their prime. For years, it’s been clear Spiritbox had the potential to break through. With a near-capacity crowd at Vancouver’s PNE Forum, that potential is no longer a prediction, it’s reality. At this pace, it’s not hard to imagine their next Vancouver stop being a headlining slot at Rogers Arena.
I’d like to thank Spiritbox and their incredible team for allowing me to capture the magic that was the Tsunami Sea Tour. If you’d like to catch a future date, or find out more info on the band, visit here.
Check out our favourite photos of the night below or head to our Facebook page for the full gallery!
SPIRITBOX
LOATHE
All Photo Credit: Marquise Monno
Concerts Reviews
LIVE REVIEW: Lily Allen Leaves the Hits Behind for a Theatrical ‘West End Girl’ in Vancouver
There was something almost cheeky about Lily Allen making a venue full of people wait for the songs they came to hear, then giving them exactly what she promised instead.
Before Allen appeared at the Orpheum Theatre on September 28, 4 members of the Dallas Minor Sextet took the stage with cello arrangements of some of her biggest songs. “Smile,” “The Fear,” “LDN” and “Fuck You” became an elaborate karaoke session, with the lyrics projected onto screens while the audience did the singing. It could have felt like a strange substitute for an opening act, but instead, Vancouver embraced it. By the time “Fuck You” rolled around, the arena was doing a very good impression of several thousand people at a Lily Allen pub night.
Shortly before 9pm, the stage shifted into something altogether different. Allen appeared behind the curtains and launched into “West End Girl,” the title track from her 2025 album. From there, the evening stopped behaving like a conventional concert.
That distinction matters. Allen is not here to run through the hits, tell a few stories between songs and send everyone home with “Smile” stuck in their heads. The West End Girl tour has been built as a one-woman theatrical production, and the album is performed from beginning to end, in order. There is no live band and no parade of backup dancers. The focus is Allen, the story and an increasingly bizarre apartment set that seems to mutate with every song.
Allen has spent two decades turning blunt observations, bad decisions, sex, relationships and personal disasters into pop songs. West End Girl takes that instinct and strips away most of the distance. The album was already brutally personal. Seeing Allen physically inhabit it makes some of its moments considerably harder to escape.
The stage becomes her apartment, bedroom and emotional crime scene. A swing appears, chandeliers descend, and costumes change. At one point, Allen emerges with a receipt incorporated into her outfit, turning the evidence of betrayal into a ridiculous and oddly effective piece of stage design. A bag filled with decidedly NSFW contents gets its own moment. None of it feels particularly subtle, but subtlety would be a strange request to make of Lily Allen.
The strongest moments come when the production gets out of the way and Allen lets the ugliness of the story sit there. “Relapse” is devastating. Allen moves through the space with the exhaustion of someone trying to outrun her own thoughts before eventually breaking down in tears. There is no need for a speech afterward. The song has already said enough.
The phone call in “West End Girl” is another standout. Allen performs only her side of the conversation, but the missing voice is easy enough to fill in. The audience does, loudly. It is one of those moments where the fourth wall works in her favour. Allen doesn’t need to explain the story because we are already inside it.
That commitment to the album is what makes the show compelling. There are no “Not Fair,” “The Fear” or “Smile” performances from Allen herself. The old songs belong to the Dallas Minor Sextet, and that is a deliberate choice. Some fans will inevitably wish Allen had thrown one or two classics into the main set. I get it. If you’re standing at the Orpheum Theatre waiting to see Lily Allen, watching someone else perform “Fuck You” on cello is a pretty unusual way to get your money’s worth.
But once the main show begins, the absence of those songs makes sense. West End Girl is being treated as one complete piece, rather than a collection of tracks that happen to share an album cover.
Allen closes the album with the same theatrical control she maintained throughout the night. For “Fruityloop,” chandeliers come down around her, the stage returns to the world established at the beginning and the West End Girl sign comes back into view. It feels like the final scene of a play.
That’s probably the best way to judge this show. If you came expecting Lily Allen to perform her greatest hits, you might leave wondering where the concert went. If you accepted that West End Girl was the concert, the night made considerably more sense.
Lily Allen brought a play with a pop album attached to it. For 60 minutes, she made the Orpheum Theatre feel like her apartment, and I loved it.
Concerts Reviews
LIVE REVIEW: Let Your Freak Flag Fly: DEVO and The B-52s Bring the Weird to Rogers Arena
If there was ever a concert where you could show up wearing a red energy dome, a giant lobster costume, or something covered in sequins and somehow feel underdressed, it was Sunday night at Rogers Arena. DEVO and The B-52s brought their Cosmic De-Evolution Tour to Vancouver on September 27, turning the arena into a colourful, wonderfully weird collision of new wave, dance music, retro-futurism and pure camp. It was less like watching two bands from another era and more like being dropped into a very strange party that somehow never stopped being cool.
DEVO kicked things off with their signature visual style firmly intact. The yellow jumpsuits and unmistakable red energy dome hats made an appearance, along with a seriously impressive light show that turned the stage into a constantly shifting wall of colour and movement. There was a lot to look at, and the band clearly understood that half the fun of DEVO is the spectacle. At one point, they took things a step further by throwing red energy domes from the stage into the crowd, sending fans scrambling to catch one of their own. “Uncontrollable Urge” had the arena bouncing, while “Whip It” brought one of the biggest reactions of the night. Watching thousands of people lose themselves to a song that has been living in the cultural bloodstream for decades was pretty great.
Then came The B-52s, and suddenly Rogers Arena felt less like a hockey arena and more like the world’s biggest dance floor. Kate Pierson, Fred Schneider and Cindy Wilson brought the kind of energy that makes it impossible to simply sit and watch. “Planet Claire,” “Roam,” “Private Idaho” and “Love Shack” had the crowd singing and dancing along, but naturally, everyone knew what was coming. “Rock Lobster.” And yes, there was an actual lobster on stage. The giant crustacean made its appearance as the band tore into their gloriously bizarre classic, perfectly summing up what makes The B-52s so much fun. They have never seemed particularly interested in being normal, and thankfully, they still aren’t.
Their fans are just as committed. There was a definite cult-like devotion in the room, with plenty of retro outfits, dancing, big hair, wild accessories and people who clearly knew every single word. The crowd ranged from longtime fans who have been following the bands for decades to younger concertgoers discovering the music for themselves. That might be the most fun part of the Cosmic De-Evolution Tour. These songs have somehow escaped their original era. They still work. They still make people dance. And the bands themselves seem perfectly happy to keep letting their freak flags fly.
DEVO and The B-52s may have been formed nearly half a century ago, but there was nothing particularly nostalgic about the night. This wasn’t a museum piece or simply a trip down memory lane. It was loud, colourful, ridiculous and incredibly fun. With DEVO‘s futuristic visuals, flying energy domes and The B-52s‘ wonderfully unhinged stage presence, Rogers Arena got a little weirder on Sunday night, and Vancouver was better for it.
Check out our favourite photos of the night below or head to our Facebook page for the full gallery!
DEVO
THE B-52s
All Photo Credit: Heather Horncastle