pup

Following their latest release, entitled ‘Morbid Stuff,’ Canadian punk rock band, PUP, set out for a North American tour mid-April of 2019. In New York City, they played at the very compact Brooklyn Steel. With no barricade and limited side-stage space, it was a night PUP was used to: sweaty, intimate, and loud. However, they decided to have a round two of North American shows, starting early September. The Falls Apart 2019 tour features venues that are a bit bigger. Or, in the case of New York City, the biggest venue they’d played there yet. Terminal 5 has three levels and a capacity of 3,000 people. Although it is a pretty well-hidden space to play live music, it is one of the bigger and more pristine venues in Manhattan. Seeing PUP play there was something we had not expected to see for quite some time. However, there was nothing missing from it that we would have wanted from a usual PUP show. It was still loud and rowdy and enjoyable as ever. With a nonstop pit all night and crowd-surfers going this way and that, it was like taking multiple Brooklyn Steel shows and condensing them into one. Something about seeing a band when you know it’s the biggest show they’ve played thus far in their career carries so many expectations with it. It could either be their best show or one that falls short of their usual standards. With PUP, bigger meant bigger on the night of September 12th, 2019. Energy all the way up, punk sounds heavier than ever, and a fan-band relationship not unlike one at a non-barricade show sufficed even in the tall walls of Terminal 5.