Neck Deep’s Co-Headline North American Tour with State Champs – GALLERY + REVIEW

We recently had the opportunity to check out the Chicago date of Neck Deep and State Champs’ co-headline North American tour with Knuckle Puck and Like Pacific. You can check out our review and photos, after the break.

The AP World tour brought State Champs, Neck Deep, Knuckle Puck, and Like Pacific to Concord Music Hall.

Opening the night were Ontario natives, Like Pacific. With this show having had an early start time I was impressed by the amount of people who were already there. With one of their members sporting one of our own local band’s merch, Sleep On It, Like Pacific gave everyone a reason to feel good about being there early. Their new album, Distant Like You Asked, is out now and they gave the crowd a taste of what they were in for. Playing songs such as “Eviction”, “Distant”, “22A”and others they got the crowd moving and warmed up for the bands to come.

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Next up were Chicago’s own, Knuckle Puck. As soon as they took the stage, people were singing along and even started crowd surfing. Giving them a mix of old and new songs to sing along to such as “No Good”, “Bedford Falls”, “Pretense”, “But Why Would You Care?”, “Swing”, “Gold Rush”, and others, the crowd seemed to really enjoy the set. Their debut album, Copacetic, was released just last year and the crowd was singing every word right back.

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Taking the stage next were Neck Deep. The venue seemed to be filled up way more once they started playing and there was way more crowd surfers at this point and moshers. With having their album, Life’s Not Out to Get You, drop last August, they made sure to keep the energy up by playing tracks from that album plus from their older ones. Fans were heard over Ben Barlow’s voice during numbers such as “December”, “A Part of Me”, “Growing Pains”, “What Did You Expect?”, “Kali Ma”, “Losing Teeth”, “Can’t Kick Up the Roots”, “Serpents”, “Crushing Grief”, and others.

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While waiting for State Champs to take the stage, I noticed a decent amount of people leave the crowd and I thought that was pretty odd but as soon as they took the stage, it seemed to get crowded once again. Almost every song they played, there were a number of people crowd surfing and moshing. Every time they played an old song, I could the cheers and excitement from the fans who clearly were waiting for that one song to be played. If you didn’t already know they released a new album, Around the World and Back, about four months ago. This being the first time fans got to hear new music live, I think the response was well received considering everyone was singing and jumping along matching State Champs onstage energy. Singing along to songs such as “Secrets”, “All You Are is History”, “Perfect Score”, “Elevated”, “Easy Enough”, “Losing Yourself”, “Critical”, “Simple Existence”, and more the crowd was more than willing.

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Complete with confetti at the end, this is definitely not a show you want to miss.

Information about this review and photos:
Bands – State Champs, Neck Deep, Knuckle Puck, Like Pacific
Reviewer/Photographer – Ali Jimenez
Date – February 14, 2016
Venue – Concord Music Hall in Chicago, IL