As Cities Burn
Artist: Emery, As Cities Burn, The Classic Crime
Venue: Echoplex, LA
Date: 3/1/26
As Cities Burn played a sold-out at the Echoplex on March 1st. This one was special for me. As Cities Burn was one of my favorite bands growing up. Between them and mewithoutYou, they captured the existential angst many kids socialized in youth groups in the early-to-mid 2000s.
I had not seen them since Cornerstone in the early 2000s. Twenty years later, they played exclusively through their third record Hell or High Water (2009). For only a three-piece, they felt sounded unnaturally full. Cody's guitar work and voice carried enormous weight, raw with emotion, and the creative liberties they took with song transitions kept even the most familiar moments feeling alive. Between songs, Cody pulled the room into big existential questions: the human condition, why we're here, what these songs are about. For anyone who grew up with this band, it was nostalgic and healing in a way that's hard to articulate. The crowd felt it too.
The Classic Crime opened the night, with Seattle's Emery closing it out on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of their sophomore record The Question (2005), a seminal post-hardcore album that defined a generation. Three bands from different corners of the country — Louisiana, Seattle, and beyond — sharing a stage for a room full of people who grew up on exactly this music.
They play Glass House in Pomona on March 3rd.
