There are bands that exist in your life as a phase, and then there are bands that stay wired into the way you remember whole chapters of it. For me, Chiodos has always been the second kind.
On Thursday, July 30, Chiodos opened their “It’s Not You, It’s Me Tour” at Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, Colorado, with support from Second Harbour, sace6, and 156/Silence. For Chiodos, it marked the beginning of a new run. For longtime fans in the room, it felt like something much heavier than a tour opener. It felt like a long-awaited return.
I have been listening to Chiodos since the first album, long before this music had the distance of nostalgia around it. I met the band in 2009 at Bamboozle, during a time when this scene felt like its own world, built on burned CDs, message boards, merch tables, and songs that somehow made chaos feel understood. Getting to see them again in Denver, on the opening night of this tour, carried a different kind of weight.
Second Harbour opened the night and gave the early crowd a strong entry point into the show. Opening a bill like this means stepping into a room where many people are already carrying years of history with the headliner, but Second Harbour used the first slot well. Their set helped get the room moving and gave the night an immediate sense of momentum before the heavier support acts followed.
sace6 followed with a set that shifted the night into a different lane. Their presence added more range to the lineup, keeping the pace moving while helping bridge the opening energy of Second Harbour with the heavier stretch still to come. On a tour built around a band with as much history and emotional pull as Chiodos, the supporting acts had to do more than simply fill time. sace6 helped make the early half of the night feel connected to the full experience.
156/Silence took the stage next and brought a darker, more abrasive edge to the bill. Their set leaned into heaviness with a directness that gave the room a serious jolt before Chiodos. It was the kind of performance that pushed the crowd physically, turning the final support slot into a hard reset before the headliner’s more theatrical and emotional world took over.
By the time Chiodos took the stage, Fillmore Auditorium had the kind of charge that only comes when a crowd knows it is about to hear songs that have been sitting with them for years. There was excitement, but there was also that deeper feeling that comes from seeing a band tied to who you were, who you became, and everything in between.
Chiodos have always occupied a specific place in post-hardcore. Their music is theatrical, frantic, melodic, unhinged, and strangely beautiful all at once. The songs can feel like they are about to fly apart, but that tension is part of what made them connect so deeply in the first place. Live, that volatility still matters and it hits like a throat punch.
Opening night at the Fillmore carried that same unstable magic. The nostalgic songs still hit with the same strange mix of drama and urgency that made them feel larger than life the first time around. Hearing them again in a room full of people who clearly had their own histories with this band felt less like looking backward and more like realizing the songs had never really left.
That was the strongest part of the night. Chiodos did not feel like a band dusting off old material for a simple reunion moment. The set had a pulse. The songs still moved. The crowd still knew where to scream, where to sing, and where to let the room take over. Those older tracks carried the weight of memory, but they also still worked as live songs in the present.
For longtime fans, the nostalgia was unavoidable. These are songs that came from a very specific era of post-hardcore and emo, but they never felt trapped there. The best Chiodos material has always had a weird, restless quality to it. Even now, years later, the drama, chaos, and melody still feel alive instead of preserved.
The night also gave Denver something rare: the chance to be among the first people to hear Chiodos’ first new single in 13 years performed live. That moment changed the energy in the room. It was not just a celebration of what the band had already done. It was a reminder that this tour is also connected to something new.
Hearing a new Chiodos song live after that long carried its own kind of electricity. For a band whose older material means so much to so many people, new music can be a delicate thing. It has to honor the history without sounding frozen by it. Live, the new single felt like a door opening rather than a footnote, giving the night a sense of forward motion that matched the excitement of the tour’s first stop.
That balance between past and future gave the show its emotional center. The old songs brought the memories back. The new song gave the night a reason to look ahead. For those of us who have followed Chiodos from the early records through years of scene shifts, lineup changes, and long silences, seeing that happen in real time felt special.
There was also something fitting about the tour beginning in Denver. Fillmore Auditorium has always been a room that can hold both chaos and intimacy, and Chiodos’ music needs both. The size of the venue gave the night weight, but the crowd’s connection to the songs kept it personal. It felt like a room full of people remembering the same thing in different ways.
As a photographer, getting to capture that opening night mattered. As someone who has loved this band since the beginning, it meant more than just another show on the calendar. It was a chance to photograph a band that helped define a part of my life, then stand in the room as those songs found their way back into the present.
Chiodos’ return did not feel like a simple nostalgia play. It felt like a band reconnecting with the people who never really stopped caring, while giving them something new to hold onto. The support from Second Harbour, sace6, and 156/Silence gave the night range, but the emotional core belonged to Chiodos and the years of history packed into every song.
At Fillmore Auditorium, Chiodos gave Denver both the songs fans came to hear and the first glimpse of where they are going next. For a band returning after so much time, that is exactly what the night needed to be.
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