Chevelle + Asking Alexandria & Dead Poet Societ at Arizona Financial Theatre

CHEVELLE is the understated musical powerhouse who have continually delivered rock anthems for the past 24 years. 7 number one hits, 17 songs reaching the top 10 charts, over 4 million records sold in the USA and many more worldwide. Platinum and gold albums across their 8 studio records and successful live CD and two live DVD releases completes their extensive body of work to date. It’s all credit to their continuing dedication to be true to their craft, the genre and their fans. Chevelle’s last two album releases, La Gargola and The North Corridor both debuted #1 on the Billboard rock charts and #3 and #8 respectively, on the Billboard top 200 charts. With no signs of this Chicago alternative rock trio slowing down any time soon, their numerous chart-topping releases have certainly earned this band a place in American rock music history. After more than two decades together, numerous releases, and countless worldwide tours, the band consisting of brothers, Pete Loeffler [guitars, vocals] and Sam Loeffler [drums], have confidently sailed through decades of uncharted waters and have emerged with a collection that’s equally intricate and intimate.

Metal Hammer declared See What’s On The Inside (2021), “an outrageously infectious ode to classic rock.” Forbes noted the album’s visceral connection to early Asking Alexandria influences like Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, and Pantera. After “Alone Again” hit No. 1 on Active Rock, “Never Gonna Learn” (from the 2022 E.P. of the same name) went to No. 6. The band boasts over 1.4B combined streams and over 700 million views of their music videos on YouTube. Asking Alexandria offers reverence to touchstone icons like Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and Queen, with a relentless urgency harkening back to their early days as metalcore upstarts. In 2023, long-time comrades Ben Bruce (lead guitar), Danny Worsnop (vocals), Cameron Liddell (guitar), Sam Bettley (bass), and James Cassells (drums) ride a creative high with their forthcoming eighth studio album kicked off by the immediate success of the arresting, catchy, and sober “Dark Void.” “With the world seemingly getting darker and darker, so many of us struggle with anxiety, depression, loneliness,” Bruce says of the next album’s themes. “We are all on our own journey with unique challenges, but we have our inner strength to fall back on.” Even as their creative ambitions continue to grow, that transcendent connection between Artist Audience remains the essential lifeblood pumping through the heart of Asking Alexandria. From personal struggles to career highs and everything in between, this band truly understands.

A perfect symbol for Dead Poet Society is the “shitty old seven-string” that guitarist Jack Collins bought at a mall back in high school.

“Our former bass player actually took a soldering iron and soldered the frets off,” he recalls. “You couldn’t play it normally at all. I thought it was going to be a great idea. Years later it was sitting in my closet, and I decided to pick it up again because I got really bored. It became the new way for us to write music — it opened up a door into this whole new world we discovered.”

“It was like, ‘This is the guitar,’ he adds. “It’s like taking something broken and creating art out of it.”

With its wonky intonation, the instrument can’t produce traditional chords or scales — an unlikely choice for a rock band with such strong commercial potential. Collins and frontman Jack Underkofler are a factory of hooky riffs, even at their most detuned and menacing; and the latter barks and coos with a crystalline purity that recalls Jeff Buckley and Muse’s Matt Bellamy.

That contrast is crucial to the band’s debut LP, -!- out February 12, 2021 via Spinefarm Records. Take the bruising belter “Been Here Before,” which pairs a stadium-sized chorus with angular guitars and Dylan Brenner’s blown-out fuzz bass; “I Never Loved Myself Like I Loved You” opens with the fidelity of an iPhone demo before blooming into a cinematic dream-pop singalong anchored by Will Goodroad’s rim-click drum groove. Brenner is a new addition to the lineup, but his experience as the band’s touring stand-in for the duration of their career has made him a natural fit.

It’s no surprise that Dead Poet Society like screwing with rock conventions — that’s been their aim since forming in 2013 as students at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Hilariously, at least in retrospect, it did take them a bit to find common ground.

“My best friend drummed for them, and I convinced him to leave the band,” Underkofler says with a laugh. “Six months later, Jack asked me to sing on a couple songs they’d written. My apprehension came from the fact that they were kind of a meme for being one of the worst bands at school. I kind of tried to push away — our old bassist just kept asking me, ‘Do you want to write with us?’ One day he showed up on my door step and I was like, ‘Fuck.’ After I wrote my first song with them [“145″], I was like, ‘I think there’s something here.’”

The newly solidified quartet quickly developed a chemistry: Underkofler and Collins had a mutual love of Coldplay, but their tastes sprawled over time along with drummer Will Goodroad: heavy acts like Royal Blood and Led Zeppelin, modern art-pop artists like St. Vincent, even hip-hop experimentalists like Tyler, the Creator. Not all of those influences are detectable on the largely self-produced -!-, which features a handful of tracks co-helmed by studio veteran Alex Newport. But that eclecticism makes sense, given their distaste for most modern rock.

“It’s just lame,” Collins says. “It has been for like 10 years. I think that’s because people are paying too much umbrage to classic rock — there’s this ‘passing of the torch’ thing that I think is just bullshit. Heavy music is the way we communicate — it happens to be rock music, but the expression itself and what we’re trying to say and how we want to make people feel is unique. That’s what bands used to do, and I think that’s what a lot of hip-hop artists do nowadays.”

“Our goal,” he emphasizes, “is to make someone feel something they haven’t felt before.”