▣Riverside Municipal Auditorium | Riverside, California ▣Friday, March 20th 2026
▣Photographer/Journalist: Jason Jackson

There is something quietly radical about a metalcore band filling a century-old hall with songs about grief, depression, and the strange ache of surviving your own lowest moments — and having an audience scream every word back at them. On Friday night at the Riverside Municipal Auditorium, The Devil Wears Prada delivered exactly that kind of evening: cathartic, crushing, and unexpectedly beautiful.

The Riverside Municipal Auditorium — a restored Mission Revival landmark at 3485 Mission Inn Avenue, dedicated in 1928 as a soldiers’ memorial — provided a fittingly historic backdrop for the Flowers Tour. The venue’s stained glass windows and arched ceilings absorbed the band’s noise with surprising grace, and the recently upgraded sound system made every bass drop feel tectonic. Capacity sits around 1,400, and the room was as close to full as it gets for a weeknight metal show in the 909, the crowd pressed toward the stage in a mass of black T-shirts and raised fists.

Support came from Four Year Strong, Split Chain, and I Promised the World — a lineup that warmed the room steadily across the evening. Four Year Strong, the Worcester pop-punk veterans, reminded everyone how much fun a circle pit can be when the riffs are this good, generating a genuine mosh that set the tone for the headliner. By the time the lights dropped for TDWP, the crowd was coiled and ready.

The Devil Wears Prada, opened with the one-two gut punch of “That Same Place” and “Where the Flowers Never Grow,” both from their critically received ninth album, Flowers, released November 14, 2025 on Solid State Records. The choice was deliberate and effective: “That Same Place” eased into the set like a bruised sigh, Gering’s synths swelling beneath DePoyster’s aching clean vocal lines, before “Where the Flowers Never Grow” cracked the room open. Hranica’s screams hit like a shockwave, and the floor responded.

What makes the Flowers Tour different from prior TDWP runs is the material itself. The new album leans harder into melody and emotional vulnerability than almost anything in their catalog, with DePoyster’s clean vocal voice moved to the forefront across many tracks. Live, this translates into an experience that swings between genuine tenderness and complete sonic destruction. “For You” — the band’s first-ever track to chart on both Mediabase and Billboard Active Rock — was the night’s most anthemic moment, the chorus lifting off the stage and filling every corner of the old auditorium. When it hit, it hit everyone.

But TDWP have never been a band content to rest in one emotional key, and they proved it again here. Mid-set, “All Out” and “Ritual” brought back the band’s harder edge — Capolupo’s drumming ferocious, Sipress and DePoyster trading riff for riff, Hranica stalking the stage with the focused intensity that has made him one of the more compelling frontmen in heavy music. The juxtaposition between the album’s more atmospheric songs and its heavier outliers is even sharper in a live context, where the dynamics become physical as much as sonic.

Older material woven through the set — fan favorites that drew instant roars of recognition — reminded the room that this band has been doing this for over two decades without losing an ounce of credibility or intensity. The crowd, which skewed surprisingly wide in age, seemed to hold both generations of fandom simultaneously: those who came up on the heavier early catalog and those arriving fresh through the newer, more melodic era. Both contingents left satisfied.

The set closed with “Wave” and “My Paradise,” the final two songs functioning as a kind of resolution. “Wave” in particular — one of the album’s more expansive, textured pieces — felt monumental in the Auditorium’s reverberant space, the kind of song that earns its runtime by building slowly and then delivering something genuinely transcendent. “My Paradise” sent the crowd home on a note that was heavy and hopeful at once, which is maybe the defining emotional signature of this entire album cycle.

Twenty-plus years into their career, The Devil Wears Prada are not coasting. Flowers is their most emotionally honest work, and this tour treats it with the seriousness it deserves. The Riverside Municipal Auditorium — a room steeped in its own history of loss and commemoration — turned out to be the perfect home for an album about grief, survival, and the stubborn, irrational act of letting things grow again.

Check out our contributor photographer, Jason Jackson photos now!

SPLIT CHAIN

FOUR YEAR STRONG

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

Check out the band websites for more info –

Split Chain

Four Year Strong

The Devil Wears Prada