Photos: Fall Out Boy tear through an intimate show at Metro

Fall Out Boy returned to Chicago’s Metro Wednesday night with an incredibly rare performance at the intimate hometown club, where they first headlined a matinee show in 2003 to celebrate the release of their breakthrough album Take This to Your Grave.

Anticipation has been building for months about potential new music from Fall Out Boy, originating from a teaser ad placed in the Chicago Tribune stating, “FOB 8 – If you build it, they will come.” The ad featured a yin-yang face symbol that we now know is key branding for their upcoming album, So Much (For) Stardust. The band used the same tease, along with GPS coordinates, to a box left at the Field of Dreams in Iowa, where the slogan originated from the film of the same name. The box contained a seashell with “2 of 13” written on it and a note reading “Heartbreak Feels So Good,” with a date stamp of 1/25, the same day as Wednesday’s Chicago show, as well as the release date of the second single of the same name.

Read more: Every Fall Out Boy album ranked

Fall Out Boy extended the same teaser to their surprise Metro performance, where the famous marquee read “If you build it…” Across the street was another billboard with the yin-yang smiley stating “they will come.” No one fully understood the symbolism when Fall Out Boy took the stage Wednesday night, but 1,000 hometown fans believed that because the Metro was built, Fall Out Boy would come and light it up.

This was the band’s first full show without founding member and guitarist Joe Trohman, who announced last week that he would be taking a break from the band to focus on his mental health. Although Trohman’s signature guitar thrashing was clearly missed, the band’s energy was in full force. Fall Out Boy ripped through hit after hit while including fan favorites that haven’t appeared in recent setlists, like “Hum Halleluiah” and “Disloyal Order of Water Buffalos.” Between songs, Wentz and Stump shared stories of their time in Chicago, playing local shows and their love for the Metro. The band shared an apartment a few blocks away from Metro, so it was fitting that the highlight of the night was during “Chicago Is So Two Years Ago” when Stump stepped away from the mic and the entire room shared their hometown pride by belting the bridge at the top of their lungs.

Wentz later revealed the symbolism behind the seashell in the Field of Dreams, sharing that the album is split into two halves representing two opposing sides of nihilism. The seashell comes from a scene in the movie Reality Bites, where Ethan Hawk’s character talks about seeing his dad after he found out he had cancer, they talked about life and Ethan’s character’s father gave him a pink seashell, which he said would “help explain things.” Ethan’s character realized the shell is empty and maybe life is pointless, insisting, “It’s a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and near escapes.” On the flip side, In the “Field of dreams,” Kevin Costner’s character never got to know his father until he was older, and his father never did a crazy thing in his life, so Costner’s character breaks out of that feeling of nihilism, and when no one believes, he builds a field in the middle of Iowa. These two opposing sides, Wentz says, “is a reflection of their band; our band is a case study, if you put a lot of heart into something you can play Wrigley Field and play with your heroes in Green Day.”

Source: altpress.com