Live Review: Pop Evil Skeletons Tour 2023

Pop Evil headed out on their Skeletons Tour headlining U.S. dates that started on March 17, 2023, in Sault St. Marie at Kewadin Casino and will be concluding on April 23, 2023, in Milwaukee at The Rave. This tour is in support of their latest and seventh studio album Skeletons. Pop Evil Tours with special guests, The Word Alive and Avoid. Last Sunday bands came to Jersey City’s historic building The White Eagle Hall that is renovated into a live music venue.

Written by Andris Jansons

First on the night was the band that is exploding out of Seattle called Avoid. They hit hard and heavy. The crowd was given no chance to warm up and the band’s vocalist Benny Scholl’s constant summoning of mosh pit did not go unanswered. Crowd surfers were landing right on the stage as the venue does not have barricade, and lucky ones earned some high five from bands. Matter of the fact it was his birthday that night, and the crowd sang him the birthday song and he had a proper drink on stage. The band has a recent album out that is called Cult Mentality.

See Avoid performance photo gallery below.

Second on the bill where American Metalcore band from Phoenix, Arizona called The Word Alive. Fronted by enigmatic Tyler Smith, also known by his nickname Telle, who can do wide vocal range and is able to comprehensively alternate between melodic and screamed vocals. Band played decent set of ten songs and made sure to touch most of their previously released albums. There was also Kanye West cover of Heartless, and though the song is not my cup of tea, I believe The Word Alive did a good job on remaking it into a metal song. Band also performed their brand new single New Reality, and Telle found out that already all fans know how to sing a long to this song. He seemed very pleasantly surprised about that. Of course, the biggest hits were left for last, as band rounded up their set with such hit songs as – Life Cycles, Why Am I Like This? and Trapped.

See The Word Alive performance photo gallery below.

The night’s main attraction Pop Evil hit the stage with their hit single Paranoid (Crash & Burn) taken from latest release Skeletons. Tremendous energy kept flowing from one song to the next. Skeletons album was the most represented with six songs. Altogether the 11 tracks on the album include the “Eye of the Storm,” which landed at the #5 Most Played Song in 2022 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Chart, and recent singles, “Paranoid (Crash & Burn),” and, “Dead Reckoning (Ft. Fit For A King).” The album also includes guest performers such as Blake Allison from Devour the Day providing guest vocals on “Wrong Direction,” adding some metal, electronic, and hip-hop into Pop Evil’s mix. All new songs perfectly mixed up with the bands earlier works underscoring the bands hard hitting yet rhythmic style.

Other albums represented during the set were Versatile, Onyx, Pop Evil and Up. Onyx had two biggest hits in the bands encore – Torn To Pieces and Trenches. They rounded up the night with Breathe Again.

The band’s performance was full of energy and impeccable. The place was rocking, and I mean literally, every time bands vocalist Leigh Kakaty implied for fans to jump, the force of the jump reverberated through the whole building. It was incredible experience for all hard rock fans that night.

See Pop Evil performance photo gallery below.