PIERCE THE VEIL and SLEEPING WITH SIRENS "Show Review" - A Parent's Perspective

The Pop Punk Dad
6 hours ago
3 min read

nfg — **Pierce The Veil/ Sleeping With Sirens**

It's hard to escape the names Sleeping With Sirens or Pierce the Veil if you grew up as a hardcore, punk, or emo kid in the 2010's. These two bands bring back giant nostalgic moments of owning the huge neon letter t-shirts of the band's with some kind of weird monster or font on the front while drinking cheap bottom shelf vodka at a party and getting in trouble by the cops for paintballing someone's house. Each person's memory of those moments are clearly different, those are just mine.

If these bands don't bring back nostalgia, then maybe you found them on Tiktok while some influencer who does body suspension turned King For A Day into a trend, either way, you became a fan of the band and now you're here.

Sunday, May 25th, 2025, Pierce The Veil and Sleeping With Sirens were the headliners for the night at The Pavilion at Starlake in Pittsburgh PA. Opening the night was up-and-coming artist Daisy Grenade who performed about a half hour of upbeat, hardcore riot girl pop-punk music.

Sleeping with Sirens took the stage, just as the sun was setting, opening the night with track "KICK ME" from their 2015 album Madness. The first thing I thought when the band came out was, "Kellin Quinn's voice has not changed, and the guy is nearly 40." It was an amalgamation of tracks throughout the band's career, mostly consisting of popular tracks with the random deep cut. One of the first tracks I noticed the entire crowd singing to was "Tally It Up: Settle the Score" from 2011's Let's Cheers To This, followed by "A Trophy Father's Trophy Son" from the same record.

The night continued on with tracks "Better off Dead" and "Bloody Knuckles" before closing out with "If I'm James Dean, You're Aubrey Hepburn" from "With Ears to See and Eyes to Hear", and "If You Can't Hang from the aforementioned Cheers album. It was incredible watching this band perform and thousands of people singing along, knowing a personal attachment to their humble beginnings playing in divey punk clubs like Charleroi's Club Octane nearly 20 years ago.

Speaking of humble upbringings, another band that did the same closed out the night, Pierce the Veil. The crowd was very alive and intense, as it was also Starlake Pavilion's opening show for the season. The band came out to a Jose Alfredo Jimenez track, "El Rey" before kicking into the track Death of an Executioner off of "The Jaws of Life" album from 2023 before kicking into a classic, "Bulls in the Bronx" from 2012's Collide with the Sky.

The plethora of hits continued with Pass the Nirvana, and I'd Rather Die than be Famous before playing "Where is my Mind?", a Pixies cover. It was awesome to see an acoustic rendition of "Today I Saw the Whole World", with the band playing a few more tracks and closing out with "Bulletproof Love", before their encore.

The encore was a three-track blast of fan favorites with Disasterology from 2013's Selfish Machines", "Hold on till May" before closing out the night with "King for a Day", a track originally performed with Sleeping With Sirens frontman Kellin Quinn to which the band performed with Kellin, which was a long-awaited thing to see for the Pittsburgh crowd.

From watching these bands play at divey punk clubs in and around the Pittsburgh area, to becoming some of the most formidable alternative rock groups of today, Sleeping with Sirens and Pierce the Veil to me, will always hold a deep-seated place in early 2010's nostalgia in my little emo black heart.

Check out photo gallery, highlights, and more below!

GALLERY