Waterparks w/ Loveless, and Poptropicaslutz! @ The Pageant – St. Louis, Mo

Tuesday night fans were wrapped around the Pageant waiting to see Waterparks who brought their “Sneaking Out of Heaven” tour. The Houston, Texas pop-punk band is on a twenty two date tour for their 5th studio album Intellectual Property that was released last April, with St. Louis as their fifth stop.

After opening bands Loveless and Poptropicaslutz! warmed things up the crowd was ready for what they came for. As the lights went down guitarist Geoff Wigington was first to take the stage followed by drummer Otto Wood. Finally lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Awsten Knight came running out and the place exploded. The band kicked things off with ‘Watch What Happens Next’ off the 2019 album Fandom and then ‘Blonde‘ before playing a seven song melody of songs off their 2021 album Greatest Hits. After ‘You’d Be Paranoid Too (If Everyone Was Out to Get You)’ a white curtain was pulled across the stage with a silhouette of Knight sitting on a stool as a prerecorded message from Knight talking about how religion hooks you when your young so that things that religion sees as bad or evil gets imbedded in you. As the curtain was pulled away the stage setup had changed a little with overgrowth and vines thrown over the backdrop and two mannequins in red jumpsuits and gasmasks flanking the central doorway. Before playing ‘Magnetic‘ Knight asked the crowd to form the first real pit of the night. After the song he told the crowd that they could not go on with the show till a pit was formed.

Knight talked about how the last time they played at the Pageant people tossed tampons on stage and said that “We were smaller then”. He also talked about the opening bands and how he remembers being where they were being the openers or when they were on Vans Warped Tour. I remember catching their set back on the 2016 Warped Tour and they have definitely came a long way and rightfully deserve it.

A little over halfway into the twenty two song set Knight moved to a small secondary stage and said he learned to play the piano for these songs and played ‘High Definition’, ‘Snow Globe’, and ‘Crying Over It All’, before heading back up to the main stage for three songs to finish out the rest of the main set and was followed with a three song encore of ‘Numb’, ‘Turbulent’, and ‘REAL SUPER DARK’

Loveless