On Sunday night, Ontario-born post-hardcore band Silverstein sold out the House of Blues Anaheim on their 10th anniversary North American tour for their 2013 concept album This Is How The Wind Shifts. The crowd was filled with merchandise bearing the album’s untrodden frontier imagery with some integrating the album’s bison into their attire for that night as well.

Seattle-based AVOID got the crowd going with their vibrant energy, their more melodic verses mingled with intense screams. Vocalist Benny Scholl was especially engaging, even crowd-surfing early into their set and his smiles indicated exactly how much he enjoyed energetic performances like these. They pulled mainly from their most recent releases, 2022’s Cult Mentality and 2020 EP The Burner including the more anthemic, catchy metalcore track “HostAge At A BeAch PArty.”

Hardcore act Stray From The Path brought more consistent intensity and a grittier sound as frontman Drew Dijorio made for an active spectacle, trotting and jumping across the stage. They kept the crowd’s energy up as they made their way through a setlist of their most popular songs, wrapping it up with their most popular track, “First World Problem Child,” which had been a successful collaboration with Architects’ Sam Carter in the studio.

Interspersed between sets were endless streams of ‘90s and 2000s pop-punk hits including by My Chemical Romance and All Time Low, and the concert-goers loved it. For their 10th anniversary tour where they would play one of their albums in full, Silverstein appropriately had their music accompanied by nostalgia, almost like a far-advanced preparation for When We Were Young Fest 2024 where they would be playing another album in full – 2005’s Discovering the Waterfront.

Backed by the silhouette of a projected wind vane representing This Is How The Wind Shifts, Silverstein immediately launched their set with “Bad Habits,” their collaboration with Intervals off of A Beautiful Place to Drown as the stage was washed with blue and purple lights reminiscent of that album’s cover. Following it up with another incredibly popular hit, “Smile In Your Sleep,” Silverstein then began to get into the album that they were on tour for.

This Is How The Wind Shifts was composed of song pairs that paralleled each other yet didn’t follow each other consecutively on the album, but Silverstein made sure to play them together throughout the night. As with the risk of performing an album in full, enthusiasm died down for the less popular songs and frontman Shane Told joked that he was only an A-side album enjoyer as well. However, they split up the album with enough other hits including a well-received cover of Linkin Park’s “One Step Closer” to carry on through the night.

One of the most popular song pairs was “Massachusetts” and the more retrospective “California” which were also personal favorites. During these, the crowd came alive with the resurgence of the circle pit, and more crowd surfers made their way over the barricade.

Silverstein ultimately wrapped up their set with the somber and brief pairing of “Arrivals” and “Departures” from This Is How The Wind Shifts. Though unconventional to bring out less popular songs after the encore, the post-hardcore band made it work, and many left the venue having enjoyed many of the hits that they wanted to hear live, along with the concept album in the way that it was intended to be experienced.