The year is 2013 and Canadian screamo/post-hardcore band, Silverstein has dropped their seventh studio album This Is How The Wind Shifts. 10 years later, the fellas are still going at it and celebrated the release of the album by doing a 10-year anniversary tour.
Silverstein took a different approach when performing This Is How The Wind Shifts in its entirety. Instead of playing the album from front to back, the band mixed it up and performed the songs out of order sprinkling in fan favorites and hits from their other albums. Fans in attendance also got to participate in a live set list vote.
To get things started, Silverstein kicked off their set with “Bad Habits” off A Beautiful Place To Drown (2020) followed by “Smile in Your Sleep” off Discovering The Waterfront (2005). Early in the set, we heard some heavy hitters off This Is How The Wind Shifts such as “On Brave Mountains We Conquer”, “In Silent Seas We Drown”, “Massachusetts”, and “California”. Some songs that were thrown in the mix from other albums included “Infinite” off A Beautiful Place To Drown and “Ultraviolet” and “The Altar/Mary” off Misery Made Me (2022). It didn’t take long for Silverstein to get back into This Is How The Wind Shifts as they performed “This Is How”, “This Is How The Wind Shifts”, “A Better Place”, and “To Live and to Lose”. Although it took a while to hear a song off Dead Reflection (2017), we finally got it when the band played fan favorite, “The Afterglow”. In between songs throughout the set, lead vocalist Shane Told promoted the live set list voting and at this point, the results were in. The two songs with the most votes were “Smashed Into Pieces” off the debut album, When Broken Is Easily Fixed (2003)and “Your Sword Versus My Dagger” off Discovering The Waterfront. After the band played these two winners, a sentimental Told took a moment to thank the crowd. “Playing those two songs made me emotional,” shared Told. “This is the 4th time we’ve sold out this room since it opened [it opened in 2017]. That means a lot to us…the first time we ever played at Chain Reaction [Anaheim-based venue], it was the first time we ever actually sold out a show. I thought they were kidding…our shows at that point were like 50-100 people. To now have this place packed on a Sunday night to 1,900 people, that means so much to us…thank you for your loyalty and everything you’ve done for us for 20 years.” How do you keep playing after a speech like that? Well, Silverstein found a way to do it as they got back to This Is How The Wind Shifts and played “Hide Your Secrets” and “With Second Chances”.
Silverstein is one of those bands that when they cover a song, they find a way to deliver and apply a touch of their sound that won’t make people stop listening to the cover. They did just that with Linkin Park’s “One Step Closer”. Everyone around me either sang, jumped, or had their phones out. None of that would stop as the band proceeded to play fan favorite, “My Heroine” off Discovering The Waterfront. If you’ve seen Silverstein before, then you already know this is a song they play every time and it’s one that anyone who’s anyone is going to sing along to. Unfortunately, “My Heroine” would be the last song before the encore.
There were still some songs from This Is How The Wind Shifts that the band had not played yet. For the encore, Silverstein played “Stand Amid the Roar”, “In a Place of Solace”, “Arrivals”, and finally, “Departures”. With a great night coming to an end and this tour now over, one has to wonder how the screamo/post-hardcore veterans will surprise fans in 2024. No matter what, they have always come through.
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