Real Friends | Chicago, IL

Chicago proved that a little snow couldn’t stop them from seeing Real Friends end their tour with a hometown show at House Of Blues alongside Eat Your Heart Out, Grayscale and Boston Manor.

Unfortunately, due to the snow, I did end up missing most of Eat Your Heart Out’s set, but the part that I did catch was full of energy and drawing the crowd in.

Grayscale was up next and despite frontman Collin Walsh having been diagnosed with strep throat the day before in Detroit, their set was as energy packed as everyone has come to expect from the group. Opening the set off with Let It Rain, track one of their album Adornment, they had a strong start that sent crowd surfers through the crowd immediately and kept them going throughout the entire set.

From the second that Boston Manor stepped foot on stage, the crowd was going wild. With almost constant pits and crowd surfers. Frontman, Henry Cox, actually shouted out the security in the middle of the set for how well they were catching and handling crowd surfers. Overall, they were a perfect opener for Real Friends, especially at their hometown show.

There aren’t many shows that compare to a hometown show for a band like Real Friends. You could feel the excitement throughout the room before the lights even went out for their set, as mosh pits opened up and room-wide sing-along started to the playlist playing over the speakers. Their setlist was the perfect mixture of songs off their brand new album, Composure, as well as the older songs we’ve all known and loved for years. Kicking the night off with Me First, the band had people crowd surfing within seconds of their set starting and that energy kept up all the way through them closing with From The Outside, the lead single off the new album.