A Day to Remember, The Story So Far, Four Year Strong & Militarie Gun in the D
A Day To Remember brought pals The Story So Far, Four Year Strong, and Militare Gun to Metro Detroit’s Michigan Lottery Ampetheatre on June 12 to kick off the season for the Pop-Punk crowd, and it was a circle pit-filled rager!
MILITARIE GUN
Militarie Gun has been floating around our favorite circles for a while, but this was our first time encountering them in the wild. Their energy was immaculate as they powered through tracks like “Do It Faster,” “Very High,” and a cover of Blur’s “Song 2” which is a fan favorite no matter what crowd you’ve got.
Rather than share their shorter setlist as the opener, we’re going to give you their discography to check out:
FOUR YEAR STRONG
Four Year Strong brought the fire (sans pyro) for their set. With two vocalists at the helm – Dan O’Connor and Alan Day – we got a double-dipped-duty of lyrical delivery, along with a packed punch with their focus tracks like “uncooked,” “Dead End Friend,” “Get Out Of My Head” and “Wasting Time.”
If you need more Four Year Strong live in your life, you can catch them at ‘When We Were Young’ this fall, playing ‘Enemy of the World’ in its entirety.
Check out their full setlist here:
THE STORY SO FAR
The Story So Far kicked off their set and prepped the crowd for what was to come from A Day To Remember. Fans of The Story So Far are invested in the lyricism of the band, and Parker Cannon’s delivery of them. While many note he doesn’t move very much from the mic, the lyrics are a heavy hitter of themes including breakups and talking about addiction, so we say that gives Cannon a pass to focus on a stellar delivery, rather than exaggerated showmanship.
The Story So Far will be dropping an album on June 21 titled ‘I Want To Disappear,’ so until we’re served that dish, snack on the Hors d’oeuvres that is their setlist from the show here:
A DAY TO REMEMBER
As someone who’s seen A Day To Remember and photographed them over the years, they never disappoint, even when they titled the tour “The Least Anticipated Album Tour.” We were corralled to the side to stand out as photographers for Song #1 on the set, “Sticks and Bricks,” because the band’s production included a huge blast of confetti to get the crowd rolling.
Their set started off a lot harder than what we expected, following song 1 with “All I Want,” “2nd Sucks,” and “Paranoia,” before cooling the crowd with “I’m Made of Wax, Larry, What Are You Made Of?” and a personal favorite of ours, “Right Back At It Again.” There were moments where lead singer Jeremy McKinnon played rough with the crowd, reminding fans that “they asked for some of these songs in the setlist” and it was “their time to prove they still wanted it” with songs like “Violence (Enough Is Enough)” and a few others mixed in with the set.
We were also surprised when the touring bassist (whose name we, unfortunately, didn’t catch) was saddled with “the blame” in which Jeremy pointed out that he specifically requested to play “Since U Been Gone,” a cover song that McKinnon seemingly has avoided playing live for over 10 years — to the crowd’s eruption of joy. This song is such a cover-staple for the band and Pop Punk as a whole that Michigan Lottery’s attendees screamed the lyrics from the pavilion, hill, and pit. You truly haven’t lived until you see a bunch of tattooed punks in cut-offs slam-dancing to Kelly Clarkson’s lyrics, let me tell you!
The crowd-surfers were alive and well, even crowd-surfing on top of each other, which has become a “thing” at A Day To Remember shows. At some point, ADTR beach balls were released into the crowd, along with more confetti and toilet paper. Unfortunately, at one point in the show, the band had to be pulled to a halt because one of the security guards was injured while fielding crowd-surfers, interrupting “The Danger in Starting a Fire.” Before the injury, McKinnon asked the crowd to cheer and thank the security staff for keeping everyone safe, so this was no fault of the band whatsoever.
Ending the night, McKinnon took up the guitar to play “If It Means A Lot To You,” before the encore of “It’s Complicated” and “The Downfall Of Us All.” This might have been the best show we’ve seen ADTR put on so far, topping their Self Help Fest performance at the same location in 2017, and their Riot Fest performance in 2015 in Toronto. The band is on the list for this year’s ‘When We Were Young’ Festival, slated to play ‘Homesick’ in full.
The band has not given details on releasing a new album, with their last being ‘For Those Who Have Heart’ in 2023, but they did drop a new single called “Feedback,” which you can see the video for here:
CATCH A DAY TO REMEMBER + FRIENDS ON TOUR IN A CITY NEAR YOU: