The Rockshow at the End of the World Tour feat. All Time Low – REVIEW

The Rockshow at the End of the World Tour, trying saying that 10 times fast, came rolling through Chicago smack dab in the middle of October. The lineup featured headliners, All Time Low, supporting their new album, “Don’t Panic,” as well as supporting acts: The Summer Set, The Downtown Fiction and Hit The Lights. You can check out our review of the tour after the break.

House of Blues Chicago, it is pretty notorious for their box office mix ups, multiple guest lists that you’re never on and their persuasive third part security guards. I was honestly dreading shooting here, or possibly not shooting here, depending on how nice the staff chose to be when I arrived. Oddly enough, there was no hassle at the box office, there was no arguing with the security and hell, they even gave me a free cold bottle of water! They only thing I could complain about was the show start time online was 6pm and the show actually started at 5:30pm. So with that, unfortunately I missed a good majority of Hit the Lights’ set. From the last song I heard them play it sounded like I missed an absolute party and I was very disappointed.

After missing the opening band I figured, hey the next bands should be pretty decent because they’re on tour with megastars, All Time Low. The Downtown Fiction, I’ve heard the name but I haven’t heard the music before. Well when they opened, it was, well, it was interesting. Musically, they were pretty tight and were decently good. After further inspection of the crowd, it was apparent why The Downtown Fiction and The Summer Set were slotted later in the night than Hit the Lights. In the dense moshpit of teens and preteens is where I found my answer. TDF had the basic riffs and semi catchy chorus’s that would make young girls melt. They were good, don’t get me wrong, but they have a lot of work ahead of them if they want not be a flavor of the week and sustain themselves for years to come.

I had heard many things about The Summer Set, most of them were about them having a super cute girl drummer. They were all right, they had a super cute girl drummer. Besides that fact I was super intrigued to hear them live, I’ve heard them on record and to me they sounded very bubblegum pop esc. Once they took the stage and started playing it wasn’t anything different from what I had heard from them. The stage set up was a bit different from what I was use to. Everyone for the most part had their little area, which was designated by their microphone stand and the singer had free range of the whole stage. It was a good overall set, musically tight and crowd captivating, a well suited band to warm up the crowd for All Time Low.

The best thing about seeing headlining bands are the fact that, A: they usually have a great stage show and B: they usually have an awesome lighting set up. All Time Low scored an A+ in both of these categories. They came out strong and from the set list, they were ready to bring the house down with an outrageous 18 or so songs. For a pop punk band, All Time Low covered all bases needed to be a great band, they had energy, they were musically talented, outrageous and knew how to encompass an entire audience. Not only can they do vulgar humor and fast paced catchy songs, but they can slow it down and have everyone in the audience at a loss for words with a beautiful ballad. In the pop punk world, All Time Low have established themselves as one of the best and one of the greatest. In parallel with their music, their humor is up to par as well. As the modern day version of Blink 182, there was no shortage of poop jokes, bra covered microphone stands and sex jokes, the funny part was it had everyone, young and older actually laughing and that is a hard accomplishment with that type of comedy. All Time Low is an amazing band and a master of their craft and genre. It was a great set and I was very satisfied.

Information about the review…
Tour: The Rockshow at the End of the World Tour feat. All Time Low
Band: All Time Low, The Summer Set, The Downtown Fiction, Hit The Lights
Reviewer: Jim Vondruska
Date: October 16, 2012
Venue: House of Blues in Chicago, IL