Memphis May Fire Shapeshift in San Diego

Kaiya Vandemark
Apr 28
3 min read

Memphis May Fire brought The Shapeshifter Tour, featuring support from elijah, Windwalkers, and Caskets to The North Park Observatory on April 23rd! This tour is in support of Memphis May Fire’s 8th studio album, Shapeshifter, which was just released on March 28th of this year. Memphis May Fire has been touring for 18 years and 8 albums later, they still continue to crush it every time.

The night kicked off with Elijah, starting off with his leading single “SKIN”. His set consisted of a mix of some of his older pop punk tracks that made him blow up on TikTok a couple of years ago, along with a handful of new tracks that he has released as singles throughout this year. Guitarist Xander Raymond Charles was so fun to watch. He was just up there blowing bubbles and doing some fun little dance moves. He closed out with his most recent release, “UNDERRATED”.

Wind Walkers opened up their set with “The Overlook,” walking out on stage to the theme from The Shining. Their setlist consisted mostly of songs off their 2023 release, What If I Break, with one exception of their latest single,“The End Aesthetic.” During their “Drowning Hymns”, they brought out their friend Danielle to scream the breakdown, and she was amazing! We met them at the end of the night at their merch, and they were seriously the nicest, down-to-earth guys!

For some reason, Caskets had a little bit of a late start to this tour so this was their first show! Their “walk-out” song was “Livin’ On a Prayer”, which was the perfect song to get the crowd ready and all singing together. The band walked out and they went right into “Believe”, which is off their latest album, Reflections, released in 2023. We got to see them in October of last year at Soma on their first-ever US headlining tour! It was great to see the boys back in San Diego again so soon! They closed out with their hit “Glass Heart”.

Finally, it was Memphis May Fire time! As soon as the lights went down, the riff from “Shapeshifter” began to play. Right from the start of their set til the very end, you could see just how happy both the band and the crowd were to be able to share this moment together. Their set was perfectly balanced between playing off Shapeshifter and also pulling from most of their previously released albums. Throughout their set, they had cryo jets that made it all the more exciting. At the end of their set, Memphis May Fire played “band peak a boo”, as lead singer Matty Mullins dubbed it, when they walked off stage to come back seconds later for their encore. The encore consisted of “Hell Is Empty” before officially closing out with “Blood & Water”.

The Shapeshifter US tour is just kicking off and will continue through mid-May, with it’s last stop being at Welcome to Rockville festival in Daytona, Florida. We’ll be there and we can’t wait to see all these guys again!

Remaining dates on The Shapeshifter Tour:

04/29 Billings, MT @ Pub Station

04/30 Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex05/01 Denver, CO @ Summit

05/03 Columbia, MO @ The Blue Note

05/04 Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater

05/05 Joliet, IL @ The Forge05/06 Grand Rapids, MI @ Elevation

05/08 Columbus, OH @ Sonic Temple

05/09 Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Monarch

05/10 Worcester, MA @ Palladium

05/11 Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer

05/13 Baltimore, MD @ Soundstage

05/14 Charlotte, NC @ The Underground