WAGE WAR, WE CAME AS ROMANS, VARIALS, CANE HILL In Las Vegas With Photos!

Monday, November 2, 2026 at 8:53 AM

By Arnold 'Rocky' Kessenger, Through The Metal Lens

The Emergency Broadcast Tour Takes Over The Airwaves At The House Of Blues On October 29th

Live Photos By Arnold 'Rocky' Kessinger / @through_the_metal_lens

I came to House of Blues with a little unfinished business, and a pretty good idea of how my night was going to end. WAGE WAR was headlining, and I fucking love WAGE WAR. That part wasn’t a mystery. I’ve been hooked since my first time seeing them, at Louder Than Life, and this would make roughly four or five shows for me. When the Emergency Broadcast tour appeared on my calendar, I jumped on it! But before we got to the band I already knew I wanted to see again, I finally had a chance to catch CANE HILL. I have been chasing these guys for years. Somehow, their tours always managed to go where I wasn’t, or land somewhere I couldn’t get to see or photograph them. This time, everybody’s schedule cooperated. Now they just had to live up to all that waiting.

They did! Opening with “Power of the High,” the New Orleans band got right to work, with vocalist Elijah Witt leaning into the microphone while blue and green light moved around the stage. Guitarist James Barnett leaned back into his playing, and the whole band looked ready to make the most of their time. There was plenty of energy up there, but what really brought me into the set was how Witt talked to the room! He thanked the other bands for having them out, welcomed people who might not know CANE HILL and reminded us why we were all standing there. It was Thursday. So what? Treat it like the weekend. Get up, move, dance, get in the pit. Young, old, somewhere in the middle it didn’t matter. Find your way to have a good time. After waiting so long to see them, I appreciated that I was watching a band that seemed just as happy to be there.

By the time “I Always Knew We Were Doomed” led into “The Midnight Sun,” Witt had one more thing to settle. VARIALS gets all the crowd surfers, and CANE HILL didn’t want to be the band left without any. Fair enough. Ask this room for a little help, and apparently somebody will volunteer to go overhead. Hands went up, a fan went across them, and CANE HILL got their answer. That was an outstanding way to start the night! They didn’t have the headliner’s production at their disposal, but they had movement, personality and songs that made me glad I finally got in the door for them. I’d see them again without hesitation. Give them a longer set and a higher spot on the bill, and I’ll be even happier.

VARIALS was a different situation for me. I knew the Philadelphia band, and I’d listened to them, but I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’d been counting the days. I was familiar enough to be interested and unfamiliar enough to have some catching up to do. Vocalist Skyler Conder and company took what CANE HILL handed them and pretty much two-stepped their way into the hearts of the room! There were clearly people in that crowd who had come ready for VARIALS. Watching Conder plant his feet and lean into the microphone while arms rose across the floor, I could see why. “The Hurt Chamber,” “Conscious Collapse” and “Empire of Dirt” gave me songs I knew and could get into immediately. The others kept making me think I needed to spend more time with this band. That’s a good place to find yourself during a set. You’re enjoying the familiar stuff, but you’re also being given a reason to listen after the show. VARIALS made my playlists that night! I’m an album guy. I don’t do a lot of playlist building, so take the win, guys. You earned it!

Then WE CAME AS ROMANS went and made me understand my friends. I know people who absolutely love this band. I’ve heard them throughout the years, listened here and there, but they never quite sunk their teeth into me. Watching the band from Troy, Michigan, at House of Blues changed that. Dave Stephens was right up front, reaching toward the crowd, dropping low into his delivery and making use of the space around him. White guitars caught the bursts of light, hair went flying, and there was always something happening when I looked back toward the stage. When I turned toward the floor, I saw people absolutely going bonkers for this music! The whole crowd wasn’t moving constantly, one early surge broke into three or four little pits before settling some, but the people who were locked in were giving it everything. I have to applaud that fan base! You could see how much these songs mattered to them.

What got me, was how comfortably the performance and the conversation fit together. Stephens talked about failure, being down and continuing forward when you don’t know what tomorrow is bringing. Keep your head up! Keep moving! When they played one “for the dreamers,” it felt like an extension of the conversation they were already having with the room. Later, drummer David Puckett bounced in his seat as the beat shifted toward a bridge. The lights went purple, the band joined the bounce, and the crowd went with them! It was just a cool moment to catch; everybody finding each other in the same beat. Then came a request to let the demons out and make the pit bigger. The crowd managed what looked like about 50 people, which was a solid response in that space. By the finish, the floor was jumping, people were singing, and a crowd surfer came through before the applause took over. Hands high! Horns high! Hearts high! WE CAME AS ROMANS were my surprise of the night, hands down. I understood a lot more about my friends’ enthusiasm by the time that set was over.

We still had WAGE WAR to go, and even the changeover found a way to be entertaining. A crew member was making the rounds for lighting checks when the crowd started cheering them on. Another crew member decided to get involved, directing the room to cheer and stop, cheer and stop, until they had the timing down to seconds. We were apparently doing audience rehearsals now. People were enjoying themselves, talking to each other and keeping the room loud without getting impatient. Around 10:23, the lights dropped. Flashes came from the stage, a recorded voice gave the intro a spooky feel, and blue haze surrounded the drums before yellow light broke through. Up went the phones. I’d already had a great night, and now here came the reason I’d put it on my calendar.

“Landfall!” “NAIL5!” Yeah, that’ll do it! The Ocala, Florida, band had a pit going halfway through the first song, and hearing the crowd chant “Let them Rot” back toward the stage was everything I wanted out of that moment. “Low” kept us moving through an opening stretch that had me very happy with my decision to show up again. Briton Bond spent plenty of time on the riser, directing the floor with his hands and delivery while guitar and bass changed positions around him. During “Karma,” he sat and sang with a feeling that made it seem like he had something to get off his chest. A little later, he was asking Vegas whether it had something to prove and telling the pit to widen. It widened. They spun. Nobody needed a particularly detailed explanation!

There was a lot for an established fan to enjoy in this set. I loved hearing “Death Roll,” and “Circle the Drain” was another highlight. “BLUR” gave us a gradual build beneath pink and green lighting, with the crowd washed in what I initially called hot pink in my notes before apparently deciding that accuracy demanded “fuchsia.” Photographer problems. When the beat landed and Bond joined from the riser, the whole song stepped up a level. “The River,” came with a check for the people who had been there before and those who had been there since the beginning, then brought the deep growls and a pit that opened for the two sides to collide. The acoustic “Gravity” gave us a chance to settle into something different, with a handful of phone lights scattered across the floor. Cody Quistad sounded excellent and you looked great, too, man! Having seen this band several times over the years, it was good to see you looking well and hear you delivering like that!

Now, did everything connect perfectly all night? No. There were stretches where I felt the band and the crowd weren’t quite meeting each other at the same level. A song would start hard, the floor would respond, and then some of that movement would ease off. I don’t know why, and I’m not going to pretend I can tell you what everyone in the room was thinking. I can tell you that I saw the pits, saw the surfers and heard the singalongs. Bond came down to the rail later in the set, surrounded by phones and hands before returning to the stage, and surfers came through during “Blindfold.” There was plenty of connection happening, even if it came and went. My main complaint was the lighting, and that was mostly me grumbling from behind the camera. Some of those darker stretches made me work for it. But then a beam would catch somebody just right, and I’d be back to chasing the next shot. Meanwhile, the band sounded great and kept playing songs I loved. The fan in me was having a much better time than the photographer!

At 11:32, they told us we had three songs left and there would be no encore. “Manic” brought the room back up, starting with the drums and Bond near the back before the rest of the band joined in. The floor found another burst of energy, more crowd surfers appeared, and “Stitch” gave the set exactly the ending I wanted! By then, I had finally seen CANE HILL, found more VARIALS songs to spend time with and figured out what my friends had been trying to tell me about WE CAME AS ROMANS. WAGE WAR had given me another night full of favorites. That’s a pretty damn good return on a Thursday. If you’re catching this tour, do yourself a favor and get there early. I went in excited about the headliner and left wanting to see the entire bill again!

CANE HILL