SAOSIN: SELF-TITLED ALBUM FRONT TO BACK, Garden AMP, Garden Grove, October 11, 2024.
I’m coming to terms with the fact that high school me was highly susceptible to cringe subculture trends disguised as immersive experiences of adolescent coolness. After weaning myself off toothless nu metal, I exited teendom entrenched in the pop-punk/mall emo scene, spending my allowance on whatever Hot Topic was willing to sell me. From comfortable lives, my goth-lite associates and I passed the time performing dissatisfaction on MySpace as an identity marker, insufferably decked out in Tim Burton–themed fast-fashion.
Genre hard-liners will admonish you for thinking this wave even counts as “real emo,” but for me, the inept rollout of the War on Terror and its disastrous consequences exacerbated the powerlessness and bitter despair millennials felt post-9/11; we found an outlet in the melodically whiny post-hardcore of the mid-2000s. Though the community evolved into a misogynist nightmare, with #MeToo sealing Warped Tour’s fate by 2019, there was a brief window when emotive up-tempo songs taught young men that it was okay to inhabit their feelings, write poetry, practice androgyny. But while the era’s lyrics mostly come off as nauseatingly regressive under modern scrutiny, much of their musical accompaniment was marked by serious talent and mind-blowing skill, with wiry guitar riffs and metal blast-beats utilized economically and harmonically.
Case in point: Saosin, who outlasted their peers as distinctly non-cringe genre practitioners. The Newport Beach band returned last Friday to Orange County’s Garden Amphitheatre to play their self-titled 2006 album live, plus some “surprises.”
A post-hardcore Ship of Theseus, Saosin have endured so many lineup changes that the only founding member in constant rotation has been guitarist Beau Burchell. After Saosin’s Translating the Name EP achieved 2003 virality, original vocalist Anthony Green retreated to his proggier project, with teenager Cove Reber hired to replace him. As other members left, a new iteration of Saosin workshopped several demos that circulated online throughout my senior year, ultimately shaping them into their debut full-length. Sporting its iconic rhinoceros-beetle art, Saosin found moderate success upon release but now enjoys cult status too—a formative record for many thirtysomethings, who flocked to Garden Grove to see it performed “front to back.”
The 530-seat outdoor amphitheater is shockingly cozy, nestled between pines and ceilinged by starry string lights. When I arrived, displays of show-exclusive merch faced windows selling overpriced bar food; it was a night our wallets wouldn’t soon forgive. Facing a nearly three-hour wait before any bands appeared, I had time to clock elder emos and their prepubescent offspring, sporting band shirts I rocked two decades ago: the circle of life, begun again. Admittedly, I’d long abandoned the genre, losing touch with the local concertgoer community, so I opened myself to making new friends: an ex-aspiring-writer who now sells fences, a spunky dad who spent $2,000 on his daughter’s Taylor Swift tickets. Few adults looked the emo part, but once the band arrived onstage, everyone manifested big studded-belt energy. When Saosin started delving into the LP’s tracklist, you could almost detect phantom guyliner forming around our eyes.
As cool as the album sounded live, I could barely hear it over 600 fans and their kids screaming every word, “beetle”-mania for 2024—could Saosin even hear their own sick riffage? The audience became an angelic choir, which Reber used to the band’s advantage on “Voices,” a ballad that conveniently features harmonizing group vocals anyway. Bassist Chris Sorensen worked the crowd between songs, unloading trivia about the album’s recording process and entertaining younger moshers with very-online vocab by peppering his speech with “skibidi” and “Ohio,” until the band comedically silenced him by initiating another song.
For anti-suicide anthem “You’re Not Alone,” the band directed us to turn phone lights on and houselights off, simulating arena tropes on an intimate scale. I never thought this was a complex song compared with the dynamic tension of “Sleepers” or “Follow and Feel,” but it offers a message the kids of yesterday needed to hear: “You can make it out / You will live to tell.” The chorus hit me hard, sublimating any residual cringe inside me and projecting a bittersweet montage across my memories: over the years since 2006, I saw schoolmates drifting apart, abandoning their dreams, losing their lives unexpectedly and by their own hand, all while the last illusions of “Western civilization” slid into current chaos.
Confronting this loss, embracing emotionality in a calm swarm of flashlight apps illuminating faces like fireflies, I finally appreciated the universality “You’re Not Alone” achieves through insistent reassurance, its hope’s simplicity. Nearing the end, Reber choked up while thanking us for our support across decades: “You guys changed my life.” The crowd thundered back, signaling that after everything, our cringey community had reached the other side, imbued with love for life, and for the music that changed ours forever.
