Story of the Year’s “Page Avenue” was a landmark album for post-hardcore and emo music. It came out around the same time as Thursday’s “War All the Time,” Thrice’s “The Artist in the Ambulance” and Saosin’s “Translating the Name” – each album consisted of heartfelt lyrics, intense melodies, and a large amount of screaming. “Page Avenue” fit right in, peaking at 51 on the Billboard 500 and earning platinum in 2021.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album, Story of the Year decided to play the album in full. The second leg of the anniversary tour started after ringing in the new year, and the band stopped in Pittsburgh Monday night. Youth Fountain and We The Kings came along to warm up the crowd. Unfortunately, I was late and missed out on Youth Fountain, but I made it just in time for We The Kings to take the stage.
We The Kings opened up the show with their 2007 hit “Skyway Avenue.” They played a set that contained an equal amount of old and new songs. Fittingly, they took it back to 2007 again when they ended their performance with their pop-punk anthem “Check Yes, Juliet.” This was the peak of the set.
The band did a great job of keeping the audience entertained. Lead singer Travis Clark taught the audience a dance that his child had made up. During “Check Yes, Juliet,” Clark bravely adorned a weird half-bear suit on the hot and crowded stage. Each of the band members interacted with the crowd, whether it was singing to them, egging them on or throwing out guitar picks. The activeness of the band made their set breeze by. I have not listened to the band in years, but hearing the older songs brought me right back to when I first heard “Check Yes, Juliet ” sixteen years ago.
Story of the Year decided to play “Page Avenue” in full. The album usually starts with the band’s most popular songs, “And the Hero Will Drown,” “Until the Day I Die” and “Anthem of Our Dying Day.” However, the band decided to shuffle up the album’s songs, so the most popular songs were placed in between slower, less-played songs. I appreciated this choice. A lot of the anniversary shows of albums do not hold many surprises, so mixing up the album gave me some extra excitement for the night. The band added a few more surprises to the set. They decided to add a couple of their newer songs, “War” and “Tear Me To Pieces.” I love these songs; they are fast and energetic, and I thought that they suited the rest of the “Page Avenue” set nicely.
Before Story of the Year ended their anniversary set with “Until the Day I Die,” they decided to do a mashup of early 2000s emo and pop punk songs to celebrate the bands that they have either toured with or have remained friends with in the scene. They performed bits and pieces of Yellowcard’s “Ocean Avenue,” Taking Back Sunday’s “Cute Without the ‘E; (Cut from the Team),” My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and The Used’s “The Taste of Ink.” This part of the show made me realize that the Story of the Year should be one of the next bands that accompany either Emo Orchestra or Emo Night on tour. It was fun to sing along to those songs with a live band, and that band being Story of the Year made the moments more surreal.
Surprisingly, the crowd surfer count was low and the moshing was not as lively as I predicted. If I was not fighting off a cold, I would have been all up in that mosh pit, but it did not seem like there was anyone to mosh with. I did, however, strain my voice singing along to “The Taste of Ink” and “Until the Day I Die,” which was not helpful since my first day back on campus was the next day.
