Pop Evil
December 12th
Mercury Ballroom
Louisville, KY
(All Photos by Glenn Hirsch)
Pop Evil is a band that I can’t say that I’ve ever loved, but I’ve understood how others do (sentiment I can’t say extends to Nickelback? Why? WHY? WHY?!). The guys are talented, they write very tight rock songs with iron-clad hooks, and above all they put on a killer show every time they take the stage…anywhere, all the time.
Having seen the band several times before, their show Friday at Mercury Ballroom had the band more relaxed then I’ve seen them in a while. Which includes their set in October at Louisville’s Louder Than Life festival, where the band did some filming in and around the festival grounds of some sort…a video, perhaps?
Their opening acts Islander and Red Sun Rising, with the exception of a misstep or two, here or there, were an adequate warm up the boys in Pop Evil. Like a lot of young bands when they get to open shows for a band they really respect – there are moments of posturing and bravado. But generally speaking they weren’t as bad as what I tend to expect from opening bands at shows of this nature.
The boys in the band ripped through an action packed set, that included high energy and full throttle renditions of hit songs like: “Monster You Made”, “Last Man Standing”, “Hero”, “100 in a 55”, and “Boss’s Daughter”. And while his band emitted dense, hard hitting, rumbling pseudo-metal, Pop Evil’s charismatic singer Leigh Kakaty held the crowd in the palm of his hand. Much of the setlist was a look back at a lot of the band’s peaks over the years – the last few songs specifically drew from the three singles of the band’s most recent album Onyx. After pretty straightforward renditions of “Deal With the Devil”, “Torn to Pieces”, and “Trenches” – the band left the stage – and the crowd pretty much drained.
This takes me back to my initial point. Pop Evil has never been a band that I fan boy on – but having been exposed to them, their music, and their shows enough times…I get it. And quite frankly, it’s hard not to respect a band that has as palpable a connection with their fans as Pop Evil does.
