Almost Always There: Friko’s Homecoming at Metro

Chicago, Il— April 24, 2026

At a sold-out Metro, Friko are more than just Chicago-natives, but a band that was predestined for moments like this and so much more. The four members, vocalist/guitarist Niko Kapetan, drummer Bailey Minzenberger, bassist David Fuller and guitarist Korgan Robb returned with their sophomore album, Something Worth Waiting For, celebrating its release with a triumphant, cathartic hometown show. The night became about action, what happens if you wait around, and what happens if you don’t necessarily want to.

Their debut, Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here (2024), made waves for its candor, its heavy spirit, and its correctly intense anthems that held rings and echoes of emotional cleanses, and those echoes were still there. When they played “Crimson to Chrome” and “Chemical,” the crowd met them with the same strong stance and angst that’s been there since their first release.

Time is texturally ingrained in Something Worth Waiting For, and furthermore, on stage, it was particularly audible. From “Choo Choo,” where they’re joined by a kazoo player in a train conductor’s hat, to the gentleness of “Hot Air Balloon,” and “Dear Bicycle,” to the title track’s nod, “The trains comin now/ Can’t be late,” the imagery in the record is constant: movement, transit, departure.

It’s avant-garde and abstract, but also extremely present and architectural when they’re in front of the crowd. The classical moments of each song build, symphonic but never distant with each peak and valley, and tender ballads are seen through a gritty framework. It’s rare to hear a band stretch so far between genres.

At the center of the setlist is “Certainty,” a summit of the night; a mountain of grandiose, yet so close. The song unfolds a map, a new path forward. Niko sits behind the piano, while Bailey steps out from behind the kit, guitar in hand, to perform it from the floor. Together, they bring character to the song that almost dances through the chorus and beyond, so harmoniously, creating a moment that feels suspended in time. And the crowd that was once restless in the best way, went still, trying to fully live in the moment.

There’s a feathery tone to it, but it’s still fraught and electrified with anticipation and reminiscence. Lyrically, it spins through instructions on how to get a moment that is just out of reach, sitting past the horizon, past the perpetual winter, and all of the moments that fall flat. Take the boat that’s lingering for you, push through a crack in the clouds, keep going just an inch more through an almost cartoonish saga, because there’s something to discover on the other side of that.

The band plays like they believe in that, like the act of searching is an arrival of its own. The instrumentation of the song is such a fragile push-and-pull, but it holds the knowledge that virtually nothing worth waiting for is going to meet them halfway. “Dear Bicycle” is also one of the night’s most compelling moments. Behind them, a projector plays, grainy footage of bikes being pushed up mountains, freeze frames of the show’s opener, Chaepter, with them flashing in fragments. It represents the endurance and determination of the song and the crowd acknowledges that with a cheerful resonance.

The title track is the thesis of the album, its emotional center, the idea that maybe satisfaction isn’t something you come to know, but something you have no choice but to keep chasing. When it’s performed live it blooms into such a communal experience, and by the end of the song, the final lines are echoed back by the crowd with a magnified release.

The four of them close with a three-track encore and a balloon send-off, so fitting for a commemoration of an album that’s a new side of a coin they so frequently flip.

Something Worth Waiting For is an album that moves higher and asks even more complex questions about what it means to be truly satiated. The album doesn’t conclude on an answer, and for that reason, the show doesn’t either, but that’s definitely not the point. Everyone is waiting for that something. If you have a chance to sit with the album, I suggest you do, and even more so if Friko is coming to a city near you.