Coheed and Cambria, Taking Back Sunday Bring Co-Headlining Tour to Ascend Amphitheater Tonight, Sept. 3

Two legends of the 2000s rock scene, progressive, high-concept genre-benders Coheed and Cambria, and emo and alt rock icons Taking Back Sunday are once again teaming up for a co-headlining summer tour, which returns them to Nashville tonight, Sept. 3 for a performance at Ascend Amphitheater with indie/emo outfit Foxing! No strangers to Music City, Coheed last headlined Nashville in 2022, and Taking Back Sunday came through twice the following year, but seeing both bands, with their distinct and complimentary styles, together feels like an extra special treat. You can still get tickets here while they last, and read on for more about the show!

Hailing from upstate New York, Coheed and Cambria‘s origins can be traced back three decades, when their pre-Coheed project Shabütie formed in 1995, eventually laying the groundwork and forging the sound that would help propel their explosive debut as C&C, The Second Stage Turbine Blade, to critical indie acclaim in the early ’00s. At first adopting a more conventional post-hardcore sound, Coheed quickly became more experimental, and after the breakout success of their fan-favorite sophomore effort In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3, the band jumped to the major label world and fully embraced their classic rock, progressive, and metal tendencies, with commercial smash Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One (even if you don’t think you’ve heard a Coheed track, you’d almost definitely recognize lead single “Welcome Home”). Given their genre-bending sound, the group have found crossover success from various musical communities, sharing the stage with pop punk groups, hardcore acts, and mainstream metal bands. Though originally lumped in more with the punk scene, they’ve proven to have much broader commercial appeal and staying power, now with 11 LPs and endless high-profile tours to their name. For most of their run, they’ve served as a vehicle for Claudio Sanchez’s high-concept science fiction storyline, The Army Wars, and their latest effort, Vaxis – Act III: The Father of Make Believe, continues to explore that story.

Few bands from the emo, pop punk, and post-hardcore boom of the 2000s are more beloved or more enduring than Taking Back Sunday, whose first three LPs- 2002’s Tell All Your Friends, 2004’s Where You Want to Be, and 2006’s Louder Now– are all stone-cold classics of that era, and have undoubtedly become nostalgic millennial touchstones in the decades since. Despite some lineup shuffles from 2003-2010 (after which their “classic” lineup reformed), Taking Back Sunday have been going strong since first forming on Long Island back in 1999, and have settled into their role as emo elder statesmen in the second half of their career, continuing to tour and make some interesting and adventurous new records throughout the 2010s, while also paying respect to their roots, and undergoing anniversary runs for some of their classic records. Though, in their early years, the band had something of a revolving lineup and were a DIY fixture in the local post-hardcore scene, by Tell All Your Friends, they’d cemented their roster. Their debut deeply resonated with the exploding pop punk scene, and by Where You Want to Be, TBS were becoming bona fide stars, elevating to major label status and attracting the most commercial success of their career with Louder Now. Though that entire aughts pop punk and emo boom waned over the following decade, Taking Back Sunday never slowed down, releasing four additional albums over 10 years, and maturing their style to include more alternative and heartland rock influences by 2016’s Tidal Waves. Though they’ve continued to tour regularly, save for some time off due to the pandemic, the band took the longest gap of their career to make new album 152, which dropped in 2023, and feels like a culmination of the last 25 years, both in its self-reflection and emotional resonance, as well as its alt-rock bite and pop accessibility. For this tour, the band temporarily welcomes back guitarist Fred Mascherino, as founder John Nolan recovers from a health issue, giving fans a rare chance to see the Where You Want to Be and Louder Now stuff performed by the guitarist/backing vocalist who initially helped craft it.

And opening up the show, Foxing have become one of the most beloved and enduring fixtures in the indie and emo scene over the last 15 years, making their stunning debut, The Albatross, in 2013, amidst an emo revivalist wave of bands with much substantive and artistic approach than the more commercialized, hollow pop punk and emo of the late 2000s. More than a decade and countless tours later, and Foxing have continued to wow us with each passing release, most recently last year’s eponymous fifth album, Foxing. They put a power, electrifying live show as well, so be sure to show up early!

Coheed and Cambria, Taking Back Sunday, and Foxing perform tonight, Sept. 3 at Ascend Amphitheater. The show is all ages, begins at 6:30 p.m., and tickets are available for $29.50-78.25.