Concerts Photos
The Band Camino + Almost Monday Bring the Never Always Tour to the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles
Last Thursday night at the Hollywood Palladium, rising artist ALINA, along with Almost Monday, helped kick off the evening as co-openers for The Band Camino on their North American Never Always 2025 tour.
Between each song, ALINA interacted with the crowd, sharing real-life stories behind each track. Her bubbly personality eased the tension between the artist and the audience, making it feel like you were on FaceTime with your best friend.The young artist kicked off her set with singles like “Look Bad,” “Get A Grip,” and “Second
Guessing,” along with many other amazing songs. After eight fantastic concerts from the east to the west coast, ALINA wrapped up her set, thanking the crowd for a great night filled with love and energy.
Back in August, the Almost Monday crew —Dawson, Luke, and Cole —sat down with Zach Sang for an interview to discuss their songwriting process. The bassist, Luke Fabry, stated, “To songwriting, there’s a magic and there’s a science. You can get good at the science, but the magic just has to come.” He goes on to compare songwriting to the skills required for surfing, saying, “you can’t really control the conditions, but you can control where you sit [on the board] and where you go, but at the end of the day, [the perfect wave] it has to come to you.” As a fan of Almost Monday, I’ve gone from seeing them for the first time in 2024, when they co-opened for Beach Weather, to taking photos of them in February as headliners for their 2025 The Dive tour, and now as they tour with The Band Camino. Their future looks incredibly bright. The energy Dawson and his crew bring to the stage is simply unmatched. I remember leaving their show in 2024 with several of their songs downloaded to my playlist. Moving from smaller venues like The Teragram Ballroom and EchoPlex to larger ones like The Hollywood Palladium, their hit song “Can’t Slow Down” perfectly captures Almost Monday‘s momentum.
As Almost Monday finished their set, the stage crew began to set up for The Band Camino. The Never Always tour includes 19 shows across North America and six across Europe. Camino started their set with “Daphne Blue,” “Infinity,” and Hush Hush.” The inspiration for their new album, Never Always, signifies the space between extremes such as “never” and “always,” representing the in-between moments of life, especially after a breakup. It highlights the contradictions in relationships, oscillating between holding on and letting go, and seeking a balance between intense emotions and life’s messy reality. Never Always is an album dedicated to finding steadiness while dealing with emotions that exist within the gray areas. The album explores themes of vulnerability, self-sabotage, overthinking, and life’s cyclical patterns, ultimately fostering a sense of growth and authenticity. Although solutions exist for dealing with the black-and-white issues, the gray areas remain the most confusing. The Band Camino’s songs and lyrics resonate with you in unexpected ways. Their music expresses emotions that are hard to put into words. There was a sense of community amongst the crowd as each fan connected individually to the lyrics. Raw emotion was palpable throughout the venue.
Check out our favorite photos of the night below or head to our Facebook page for the full gallery!
THE BAND CAMINO
ALMOST MONDAY
ALINA
All Photo Credit: Taylor Blazer
Concerts Photos
Summer of ’99 Tour: Creed Gives Winnipeg a Night to Remember
Some nights disappear by the time you get home. This wasn’t one of them. From the first note to the final encore, Canada Life Centre never stopped singing with Creed. Beat after beat, lyric after lyric, hundreds of voices carried the night. If you weren’t there, you genuinely missed something special.
Opening the night was Mammoth. Before jumping into the set, Wolfgang Van Halen asked the crowd how many had seen the band before and how many were first-timers. The cheers landed almost perfectly down the middle.
I also found out he was Eddie Van Halen’s son, my expectations shot through the roof. That’s a heavy name to carry. Songs like “The End,” “The Spell,” “Distance,” and “I Really Wanna” showed exactly why Mammoth is building its own reputation. By the end of the set, he wasn’t just Eddie’s son, he was Wolfgang Van Halen.
Next came Big Wreck, a band that somehow gets even better live. Ian Thornley’s guitar work was effortless, floating between delicate melodies without missing a beat. “The Oaf,” “Come Again,” and “Albatross” sounded massive. Every instrument cut through cleanly, every lyric landed. Big Wreck are definitely one of Canada’s strongest live rock bands.
Then everything shifted. Long before the lights dropped, the arena had already decided who they came for.
“Creed! Creed! Creed!”
The chant rolled across the building before the band even stepped on stage. The opening blast of “Bullets” hit with fire shooting into the air, smoke pouring across the stage. They played like a band with something left to prove. Audiences were locked in just like the band.
The set moved through “Weathered,” “On My Sleeve,” “My Own Prison,” “What If,” “One,” “What’s This Life For,” and “With Arms Wide Open.” Every chorus came back twice as loud as it left the stage. Thousands of phone lights lit up the arena.
After a short pause, the encore delivered exactly what everyone had been waiting for. “One Last Breath.” The crowd barely let Stapp finish a line before taking over. Then came “My Sacrifice,” and for a few minutes, the band almost disappeared beneath the voices around them. That’s what made this show hit differently. The show was about hearing songs that still connect, still fill arenas, and still have thousands of people screaming every word like they were written yesterday.
Check our our favourite photos of the night below or head to our Facebook page for the full gallery!
CREED
BIG WRECK
MAMMOTH
All Photo Credit: Nischal Karki
Concerts Photos
Coheed and Cambria Bring “This Is Our War” to Ottawa
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Ottawa – July 14, 2026
There’s a particular kind of chaos that follows Coheed and Cambria into a room, and Ottawa got the full dose of it on a Tuesday night that felt more like a Saturday. Twenty-plus years into their run, and still touring behind last year’s Vaxis – Act III: The Father of Make Believe, the New York prog-rock lifers proved once again that a good story and a great riff are not mutually exclusive.
The Openers: Cevilain Own Their Hometown Stage
Before the headliners even hit the stage, the local crowd already had something to cheer for. Cevilain, Ottawa’s own, got the rare hometown-opener treatment, and they didn’t waste it. Tight, loud, and relishing the size of the room, the band tore through a set that had the front rows moving well before Coheed‘s set change. There’s something different about watching a band play in their own city, and that energy was written all over the performance.
The Headliners: Hair, Harmonics, and the Keywork
By the time the house lights dropped, the room was packed shoulder to shoulder. Claudio Sanchez took the stage exactly as fans expect him to, guitar slung low and hair a wall of curls.
The production leaned hard into the band’s sci-fi mythology, with the “keywork” logo splashed across the backdrop in shifting reds, blues, and greens throughout the night. Sanchez spent as much time airborne, leaping, crouching, and prowling the lip of the stage, as he did locked into the fretboard, and the rest of the band matched the intensity beat for beat. The rhythm section anchored the heavier cuts while the guitar work carried the band’s trademark blend of melodic hooks and progressive sprawl.
Between songs, the crowd took over almost as much as the band did, fists in the air, singalongs on the choruses, and no shortage of phones raised to catch a moment.
The Takeaway
For a band this deep into a catalog built on interlocking concept albums, Coheed and Cambria‘s live show still manages to feel less like a history lesson and more like a release valve. Ottawa showed up ready to shout every word back, Cevilain proved a hometown opening slot is nothing to waste, and by the time the last chord rang out, it was clear this stop on the This Is Our War tour earned its place in the run.
Check out our favourite photos of the night below or head to our Facebook page for the full gallery!
COHEED AND CAMBRIA
CEVILIAN
All Photo Credit: Kieran Delport