If you have ever been in a room when Kill Lincoln hits their stride — horns blazing, tempos running hot, six people making more noise than seems reasonable — you already know why the Pittsburgh date on this tour sold out. Albany gets its shot on Monday, June 15, when the DC ska-punk veterans roll into Empire Underground.
Kill Lincoln has been doing this since 2008, which means they have had nearly two decades to tighten a sound that was already pretty tight. The six-piece — Mike Sosinski, Matt “Food” Ellis, Tyler Rodgers, Drew Skibitsky, Yasutaka Umemoto, and CJ Uy — plays ska-punk with the horns up front and the tempos set to fast, and they have spent most of their career on the road to prove it. Touring runs with Streetlight Manifesto, Reel Big Fish, Less Than Jake, Big D & The Kids Table, The Pietasters, The Slackers, and The Aggrolites have put them in front of audiences across the genre spectrum, and they have earned every one of those slots.
The Albany date falls right in the middle of a tight East Coast run: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Ridgewood, and Somerville all come before June 15, with Washington DC following two days later. Multiple dates on this tour are already sold out — Pittsburgh and Charlotte among them. When you see that kind of demand on a regional run, it pays to move early.
Empire Underground has built a reputation as one of the Capital Region’s most reliable rooms for exactly this type of touring act — the kind of bill that draws the crowd that actually knows what they came for. A Monday night, a ska-punk band with nearly two decades of road experience, and a room that knows how to run a show. That is a reliable equation.
Doors at 6:30 PM. Tickets averaging around $48. Grab yours before this one follows Pittsburgh off the board.