Toronto Welcomes Home Silverstein at HISTORY
toronto, canada - february 14, 2025
The Burlington-born band hit close to their hometown by way of HISTORY in Toronto (just about an hour from their origins). The crowd was chattering like they had known each other for years, the (almost) hometown show effect, coupled with the ripped lineup from Split Chain, fellow Ontarians Arms Length, Thursday, and of course post-hardcore legends Silverstein.
The trio of openers warmed up the crowd beyond belief with dozens of crowd surfers cyclically floating out of the pit just to run back in. It would’ve been impossible to predict how much rowdier the crowd would get, that was, until the LED screen flickers to black with a low hum from the speakers.
The set was introduced with a video running through the band's history. Y2K aesthetics commemorating the Y2K beginning accompanied by found-footage of the band performing over 25 years on stages like Warped Tour and tiny house shows to the massive stages they’d grown accustomed to. As the band's silhouettes graced the stage, the screen held still on a defining graphic reading, “THIS IS FOREVER” leading straight into “Skin & Bones” from their upcoming album Antibloom. It was cult-like, in the best way, as the singer Shane Told called for a circle pit to open up during the third song of the night “The Altar/Mary”.
Though the band has been touring for almost three decades, hence the tour titled “25 Years of Noise”, each time the band addressed the audience it was filled with recognition and gratefulness to the sold-out crowd. 2,500 friends and family, as the band called them, lined the walls with starry eyes. Not only was there an undertone of sentiment as this was a hometown show, the band stated as such, recalling stories and memories from growing up in Ontario and playing their first gigs in the place they grew into.
Throughout the hour-and-a-half set Silverstein covered tracks from their debut to their anticipated 2025 release, including cult classics like “Smile in Your Sleep” from the 2005 album that threw them into the spotlight, Discovering The Waterfront. After said track closed out the set, there was a heavy rumbling from stomping feet and clapping hands that cried for an encore. Most encores come out screaming with volume, but as Silverstein tends to, they defied the odds with an acoustic rendition of “My Heroine” using the crowd as personal background singers.
To call Silverstein hometown heroes would be an understatement as proven by the love shown by the Toronto crowd. An audience is rarely louder than a hardcore band, but it would be remiss not to mention the overwhelming support that’s been there 25 years ago and remains to this day.
