What does it mean to carry 20 years of history, heartbreak, and triumph into a single night through music alone? For Pierce The Veil, it means showing up in Cleveland on a humid summer night just after sunset and turning grief into something radiant. It means carrying the weight of something unthinkable and still showing up with everything you have to offer. Laying yourself bare in front of thousands of fans. What happened at Pierce The Veil’s I Can’t Hear You World Tour stop was chaotic, messy, honest, and human.
If you’re anything like this elder emo, you’ve been a fan since before they were even Pierce The Veil—back when frontman Vic Fuentes was performing under the moniker Before Today. (We don’t gatekeep in this house; check out their song… “Pierce The Veil” from their 2004 album.)
PTV has spent the last 20 years clawing their way from cramped Warped Tour stages to sold-out amphitheaters, performing on the When We Were Young main stages not once, not twice, but three times. And of course, their 2012 single “King For A Day,” which became a viral sensation 10 years after its initial release on TikTok, detonates every night like a communal scream-along with Sleeping With Sirens’ frontman Kellin Quinn joining his longtime friends at the helm.
This tour could’ve been a celebration of all of that. And in many ways, it still is. It is what many are affectionately calling the “Emo Eras Tour,” celebrating the band’s illustrious career and five full-length albums. A victory lap of their hard work and success.
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But after the May 23 plane crash that claimed the lives of six close friends and collaborators—Dave Shapiro, Dominic Damian, Daniel Williams, Celina Kenyon, Kendall Fortner, and Emma Huke—the tour now carries the weight of grief and loss at its heart.
The band hasn’t said a lot on stage about the accident—opting for heartfelt tributes on social media—but they don’t have to. The emotions ripple through the set, in every scream and silence. In every arm raised to the heavens.
You feel it when Vic lets his voice trail longingly into the crowd.
You’ll see it when the three individuals at the front of the stage—Vic, Jaime, and Tony—look to each other.
You hear it in every breath of their music.
Still, they never waver. Despite the lingering sorrow and mourning that hangs in the air, Pierce The Veil are in their prime—bleeding out their emotions and putting on the greatest shows of their lives.
From start to finish, bassist Jaime Preciado is a nonstop force of energy—a lightning bolt that zipped, zapped, and zagged across the Blossom stage. Blink and you’ll miss him in motion. A special nod to Jaime’s L.S. Dunes shirt during the Cleveland stop—a quiet and possibly overlooked moment of musicians lifting each other up.
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Vic Fuentes excavates each lyric like a scar that’s still healing, tearing it open and watching it bleed. His voice is frayed at the edges, aching with vulnerability, but never fragile. What he can’t carry alone, he casts into the crowd, and they absorb it like oxygen—each word transforming into a shared open wound.
Tony Perry brings fire to his finesse. While Jaime blazes across the stage like a live wire, Tony is all slow-burn intensity—calculated, brooding, and precise. Every moment is deliberate, and on stage, Tony creates a sturdy backbone for each of his counterparts.
And the band’s newest member, drummer Loniel Robinson (formerly of letlive.), plays like he’s always been part of the family.
The setlist stays mostly consistent each night, but the band makes every city feel seen, heard, and immensely loved. “Ohio, you get this one,” Vic told the crowd before launching into “She Makes Dirty Words Sound Pretty,” a song that they’ve slipped into their era-spanning performance for the first time since 2010. Earlier in the night, a snippet of The Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” melted into “Floral & Fading,” blurring the line between pain and peace, past and present.
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Pierce The Veil have always threaded the needle of heartache, lamenting and pleading: “Just give her back to me/You know I can’t afford the medicine that feeds what I need,” “Now I don’t wanna feel a thing anymore,” “I’m sorry, I can’t see that you truly loved me.” But on this tour, those lyrics hit harder. Their full weight is vocally hurled into the crowd, ricocheting back to the stage like a thunderous heartbeat. Vic’s words are caught and carried by a sea of voices.
The I Can’t Hear You World Tour stands as proof of how far Pierce The Veil has come and what it’s taken to get here: 20 tireless years of persistence, reinvention, and survival. The losses they’ve endured are stitched into every moment they’re on stage—not as shadows, but as part of the light that leads them forward.
The music still hits just as hard. Perhaps more so. The fans still scream every word. Perhaps even louder. But there’s a deeper pulse underneath it all: a requiem for what’s gone and a reverent hand stretched toward what still remains. Of everything that brought them to this point. The celebration feels different—soaked in memory, laced with gratitude, charged with resilience.
Across five albums, Pierce The Veil has explored the messy beauty of connection and collapse. Those themes don’t fade with time—they grow heavier, sharper, more sacred. And on this tour, they ring louder than ever.
This is for the friends, the families, the fans. And most of all, for the four men—Vic Fuentes, Tony Perry, Jaime Preciado, and Loniel Robinson—who step onto that stage each night not just to perform, but to bleed. They’ve earned this moment. And they own this night.
