Review: A Day To Remember & Papa Roach @ AEC Arena 06/04/26
This triple header moved the earth under AEC Arena in one of the best start-to-finish gigs that Adelaide will see all year.
Words Thomas Jackson // Images Cameron Stemmler
A Day To Remember, Papa Roach and Landmvrks @ AEC Arena 06/04/26
It's the second show of the Big Rock Tour at Adelaide Entertainment Centre tonight. It features a triple header of the present-day metalcore and pop punk hybrids A Day To Remember, headlining Adelaide for the first time in ten years, one of the bands that paved the way for nu metal, Papa Roach, and the future of this sound, French metalcore monsters Landmvrks.
The AEC Arena is near full by the time Landmvrks open with ‘Creature’. The monsters from Marseille don't feel out of place on a stage this big. They seem to have the confidence to perform in front of crowds ten times as big as this. They command the chaos in their criminally short 30-minute set.
There are already mosh pits forming organically, and when vocalist Florent Salfati demands a wall of death for ‘Sulfur’, the crowd follows orders. ‘La Valse Du Temps’ spotlights Salfati’s bilingual talent of rapping in French and then seamlessly bellowing roars in English.
Watching them on a stage this big in front of so many people feels like a premonition. They are the future headliners of modern metalcore.
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Papa Roach opens with their 2025 single ‘Even If It Kills Me’. Despite it being a great song, it’s the older gems in Papa Roach’s set that truly connect with the crowd. Songs like ‘Blood Brothers’, ‘To Be Loved’, ‘Getting Away With Murder’ and ‘Forever’ ebb and flow the atmosphere as they’re sprinkled in with newer material. It’s not until the ballad ‘Scars’ that the crowd becomes fully absorbed.
The biggest sing-alongs of their set come when they dive into the ‘Nu Metal Time Machine’. They perform a medley of Korn’s ‘Blind’, Deftones’ ‘My Own Summer (Shove It)’ and System of a Down’s ‘Chop Suey’. Limp Bizkit's ‘Break Stuff’ reaches the zenith of their set so far.
The era-defining anthem ‘Last Resort’ follows and crushes the response of everything else so far, leaving everyone on a high as they exit the stage to rapturous applause.
It doesn’t seem like everyone expected it to be a split co-headline set. Papa Roach plays for 75 minutes, the same amount of time Day To Remember is allocated. It feels like too much time in comparison to the energy and response of the crowd for Landmvrk’s opening set, which left everyone wanting more.
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While Papa Roach’s set is a slow build, A Day To Remember does the exact opposite and opens with their biggest song, ‘Downfall Of Us All’. You love to see it. It’s the perfect way to start a set, building the energy to an absolute peak.
For other bands, performing their encore-worthy song first would leave them with nothing left later in the set, but for a band with a discography as rich as A Day To Remember, they’re able to keep that energy high.
The band are known for their hybrid balance of metalcore and pop punk, but they seem to favour the more hardcore songs live. Tracks like ‘2nd Sucks’, ‘Bad Blood’ and ‘Paranoia’ are a reminder that they’ve always been one of the heaviest bands in the scene while still writing the catchiest songs of an era.
Songs from 2025’s surprise album Big Ole Album Vol. 1 make up the majority of the set, but with no complaints from the crowd. ‘Flowers’, ‘LeBron’ and ‘Miracle’ feel like classics, while the country-inspired, radio-friendly ‘All My Friends’ gets everyone putting their arms around each other’s shoulders.
These new songs weave gracefully alongside anthems like ‘Have Faith In Me’, ‘Right Back At It Again’ and ‘All I Want’. ‘The Plot To Bomb The Panhandle’ is the oldest song on the setlist, vocalist Jeremy McKinnon teases the crowd, asking who’s a true old school fan and is answered by most of the room screaming the chorus back at him.
The acoustic guitars come out for ‘If it Means A Lot To You’ as the fireflies from phones light up the room. They wrap it up with Big Ole Album Vol 1. closer ‘Closer Than You Think’. It doesn’t have the response of a penultimate encore song. However, it feels like an epic that, with time, will grow into one of their staples of a live set. “I hate this town, it’s so washed up, and all my friends don’t give a fuck” heralds in ‘All Signs Point To Lauderdale’, with the crowd singing as loud as McKinnon before A Day To Remember waves off Adelaide until next time.
It’s a set that genuinely leaves the audience wanting more. With the depth and love of their discography, it felt like they only scratched the surface of some albums, like Common Courtesy or Bad Vibrations and could have easily played more.
It’s not often you get to see the past, present and future of metal in one night, but this triple header moved the earth under AEC Arena in one of the best start-to-finish gigs that Adelaide will see all year.
