First Avenue in Minneapolis, MN
April 9, 2024
Photos by Brett
Review by Nick
It’s not often a hardcore band gets to headline the First Avenue mainroom in Minneapolis so this Kublai Khan TX show was going to be one for the books the moment it was announced. The fact that this show was near selling out two weeks before the show was going to make it even bigger. When we arrived at First Avenue and the sign on the door said “SOLD OUT”, that marks a huge win for heavy music!
We missed MOMENTUM’s opening set but heard good things from people in the crowd. JUDICIARY came out swinging the second the screen lifted and the lights went down. This show was not going to be for the faint of heart. I saw karate kicks and windmills in the circle pits, and even a bloody nose! I’m not well versed at all with JUDICIARY but they were impressive enough for me to pick up their latest disc “Flesh + Blood”. There’s punishing riffs, there’s grooves and there’s Jake Collinson’s intense vocal delivery. Easy to see why Kublai Khan TX brought them along on tour besides also being from Texas. Definitely time for me to get up to speed on JUDICIARY.
SUNAMI was up next. Lots of stomp and a totally different vocal delivery from JUDICIARY courtesy of frontman Josef Alfonso with more of a Rage Against the Machine style delivery. Crowd was completely in to it the entire set with lots of activity in the pit which was fun to watch from some safety upstairs. With Josef himself saying “(They) probably would never have played here if it wasn’t for Kublai Khan taking them on tour.” That’s right, MN isn’t a fly over state, feel free to come back again.
KUBLAI KHAN TX came out to perhaps now the loudest crowd sing a long right out of the gate of the year with “Theory of Mind” opening lines of “Monkey See, Monkey Do. So who the F made you?!” The crowd immediately was loud and crazy. The security guys up front had their hands full with crowd surfers right from the beginning of the song’s feedback to announce the start of the set.
Launching in to “Loyal to None” and “Resentment” from 2022’s “Lowest Form of Animal” EP, the band wasn’t letting up and neither was the crowd. For as punishing as KUBLAI KHAN TX’s music is, you can definitely tell there was some love between the crowd and the band with a few smiles cracked from the band from the intensity being thrown back at them. Jordan from MOMENTUM came up to help out on “Swan Song” creating a dynamic two headed monster on stage. If you thought the crowd was letting up once they launched in to that song, you were very mistaken.
Newly released “Low Tech” got a big pop from the crowd as they launched in to “Us & Them” with another shout along from the crowd. Before “The Truest Love” frontman Matt Honeycutt shouted out all the parents in the house who got a babysitter to come to the show and gave some extra love to all the single parents in the house celebrating everyone’s struggles and successes as parents. “Taipan” was a good pit turner as it’s a short and heavy number before heading in to “Self Destruct” which brought along another great shout along, no one can deny that “Every F'n Human is Built to Self Destruct” is a killer shout before the band breaks it down.
If you don’t know who KUBLAI KHAN TX is, remedy that now. Check out the new singles “Low Tech” and “Theory of Mind” as well as their most recent releases “Lowest Form of Animal” and “Absolute” and keep working your way back from there. Matt is an excellent and intense frontman, guitarist Nolan Ashley, bassist Eric English and drummer Issac Lamb lay it down heavy and thick. It’s pretty impossible to stay still during their set, heads were nodding if they weren’t moving in the pit.
This is a band that is not letting up anytime soon and has the show to back up the heaviness that they set the bar on record. Don’t sleep on catching KUBLAI KHAN TX the next time they roll through town. Can we get a Harm’s Way, Dying Wish, Kublai Khan TX tour to happen? It should.
SEE MORE OF BRETT's PICTURES FROM KUBLAI KHAN TX, SUNAMI and JUDICIARY HERE!
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