Punk-pop Stalwarts Senses Fail Brought Their 15th Anniversary Tour For Life Is Not A Waiting Room To The House Of Blues Chicago

Sep 28, 2023 admin_bitlc Features, Music News, Reviews 0

By Christopher David

Punk-pop stalwarts Senses Fail brought their 15th anniversary tour for Life is Not a Waiting Room to the House of Blues this week to an absolutely rabid crowd that was more than ready to celebrate.

The somewhat recent trend of full-album anniversary tours might feel disingenuous in the wrong hands—certainly for some bands, it’s a cash grab—but a band like Senses Fail seems to only benefit from revisiting past records in their entirety, given how thoughtfully composed each record has been, thanks to Nielsen’s well-documented study of his own past and life experiences. Frequently talkative and open to discussing the heavy topics behind the band’s songs, Nielsen was in fine form on Saturday, introducing single “Family Tradition.”

“You never know if this is the last one,” singer Buddy Nielsen joked at one point to scattered cries and boos. “We’re all gonna die, which is what makes this such a beautiful thing, all of us here together.” To a Senses outsider, this might have seemed like a strange monologue, but to those who know the band’s dark sense of humor and perspective on mortality that permeates many of the band’s lyrics, it was par for the course and indeed a cause to revel. Tearing through the twelve songs that comprise Waiting Room in what seemed like a flash, Nielsen and Co. (Guitarists Gavin Caswell and Jason Milbank, tourist bassist Daniel Wonacott, and drummer Steve Carey) paused to introduce just a couple of moments through an album that at times felt conceptual, most notably before “Map the Streets” and “Blackout,” before kicking off a six-song encore of hits, every one of which became a venue-wide singalong, like the radio-thrasher “Calling All Cars” and savage set closer “Bite to Break Skin.”