Show Review: Shinedown, The Warfield, 01/26/2022

Live hard rock music seems difficult to come by within the city limits of San Francisco.  Music fans here seem to mainly gravitate to EDM, thrash metal, or anything that resembles the types of artists that play at Outside Lands (indie / alternative) or Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.  Therefore, it is not impossible to believe that a hard rock band who has sold 10 million albums worldwide (and were recently named #1 on Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Mainstream Rock Artists Chart) has not performed in San Francisco city proper in 10 years (since March 2012).  On January 26, 2022, multi-platinum rock band Shinedown decided to finally visit us once again, this time with the very first show of their 2022 tour cycle at The Warfield in support of their upcoming new album, Planet Zero! 

 

This show was the start of a 2-week West Coast theater run, and Shinedown did not hold back!  For a band that sells out arenas and is a headliner for countless rock music festivals worldwide (including the nearby Aftershock in Sacramento), they still brought the production and performance that is usually reserved for the large stages. 

 

Outside at the loading zone on Taylor St. was 3 semi-trucks, as well as equipment littering the sidewalk that just would not fit inside on the stage.  Inside on the stage had the video walls… the lights… the pyro… the fire… the  wall-to-wall stage riser in the back for the drums and then some… very few individual bands ever bring this much gear to a theater!

 

Shinedown were full of energy for the entire 2-hour show.  Drummer Barry Kerch hit those drums like there was no tomorrow, bassist Eric Bass jumped around the stage channeling his best impressions of Chris #2, constantly switching sides with guitarist Zach Myers, who went to all edges of the stage to get as close to the crowd as he could without jumping in.  Singer Brent Smith was the calm glue that held it all together. He is a very polished and well-rehearsed frontman, and he did not appear to run around like his bandmates did. He may need to re-work on his convincing skills, though… at one point, in an effort to get the whole crowd to stand up and jump, he spent five minutes telling them several ways how not to jump, so when it came time to jump, it looked kind of disjointed and did not last for more than a few seconds.  

 

Chalk it up possibly to being the first show and some folks not seeing Shinedown since 2012… but overall, the lucky 1,000 fans in attendance that came out to The Warfield definitely went home happy. 

 

In conjunction with the start of the 2022 tour cycle, Shinedown also released their lead single “Planet Zero,” the title track from their seventh studio album, which will be available on April 22 from Atlantic Records.