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Nov 29, 2025
By Taylor Lang | Photos: @taylorlangphotos
ASK ANY DOCTOR, AND THEY'LL TELL YOU THAT IRREGULAR HEARTBEATS ARE NEVER GOOD
If it feels like your cardiac rhythm is too fast or out of sync, something is wrong.
Unless, of course, you’re front row at a Silverstein show, where 25 years of sonic energy is blasting out of the subwoofers by your feet. Reaching in through your ribs. Setting your pulse to the beat of the bass drum. If your doctor is cool, he’ll know that this is as good as any medicine.
Still as loud and crisp as they were two-and-a-half decades ago, Silverstein appears on the stage at the Palace Theatre as the first notes of their recent single Negative Space fill the air. There’s no time to waste as Shane Told rips right into the vocal line - he tells us to meet in the middle, but he’s pushing further and further into the crowd with every word, buoyed by some of the best guitar crunch you can find in this genre. A minute into the show, and the sold-out crowd - warmed up well by the openers of Bloom, Freethrow, and Thursday - is already fully invested and sending the energy right back.
By the time the song is done, it’s clear that this is a group that’s been creating a perfect musical chemistry for a long time. They’re tight and well-rehearsed, but they’re also having a ridiculous amount of fun as they hit every square foot of the stage and make good use of the custom riser they’ve put up front. In this performance, you can still see the group of friends that started a niche little post-hardcore band back in Burlington all those years ago. That mood is contagious. Behind the pit, the fists pump fast and furious. The crowd cheers in a rising susurrus, hungry for more.
The next song starts up - Drain the Blood, another one off their latest double release - and for a crowd that’s barely had time to breathe to this point, they sure seem to be screaming every word at the top of their lungs. It’s a preview of the night ahead, where every song will have its own cadre of dedicated singalong fans, no matter how deep the cut or how stripped back the performance. These few hours are a particular time and place in the existence of this planet where no one can resist feeling the joy in the room. You can’t help but nod your head, lend a helping hand to the crowdsurfers passing by, and enjoy every moment of the ride.
The setlist is designed as a journey back in time - starting with their most recent albums and systematically going back through their discography until, as a grand finale, the band rings out the unmistakable tapping riffs of Smile in Your Sleep. The cheer that erupts when this happens is deafening - fuelled by the collective nostalgia of a thousand people suddenly remembering loud stereos broadcasting this riff in high school bedrooms, or burned CDs pounding through the sound system of their first beater car. It’s the sound of the past and the present colliding, and being in better form than either side expected. No one here is sleeping, but they’re smiling all the same.
After the band pretends to be done (we all know it’s fake at this point), they return a minute later to entertain the crowd for a few songs conspicuously missing from the main set. At least, Shane does - ringing out a solo rendition of My Heroine that would have surely summoned a sea of flickering lighters back in the glory days of big arena rock. Two more back-to-back tracks follow - Smashed Into Pieces and Bleeds No More, both from the band’s debut studio album - and then, almost unceremoniously, it’s all over. The last notes of the last song disappear, lost in the droning cheers of the room.
Drumsticks and guitar picks arc through the air, landing in the waiting hands of devoted fans. By the time those fans look back to say a word of thanks, the band is off the stage.
We’ve gone back to where it all began. The songs, old and new, have faded, and the lights have come up - a reversal of how we all got here in this room just a few hours ago. For a moment, people wander around in a daze, and it feels surreal. Like a collective fever we all experienced, passing by without a trace.
But the point of a show like this isn’t to preserve every minute of it for later. It’s to be there for every minute of it - moving in a human wave in the mosh pit, screaming until your voice is sore, and feeling the melodies inside your chest, where they heal scars and wounds you might not have even known existed.
With a band like Silverstein, the best thing to do is let them hit you dead-on with everything they’ve got.
Their songs might break your heart now and then, but as we mentioned at the start, that’s not always a bad thing.
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