Review & Photography by Nathan Vestal for MPM
The Apollo AC always feels a little too dark when the doors open. Not ominous — just lived-in. The kind of dark that carries the weight of years of boot prints, bar fights that didn’t escalate, and guitar solos that did.
A low-frequency hum runs through the building from the moment you step inside, like the amps are breathing before they’re even turned on. On November 23rd, 2025, a cold wind slipped through the gap under the front door every time someone walked in, carrying with it that Illinois late-fall bite. You could feel the room bracing for a long night. You could feel the night bracing for the room.
Band.inc – The Bar-Fight Underdogs Who Hit First and Hardest
Band.inc walked out first. No fanfare, no intro music, no attempt to pretend they were anything but exactly who they were: a young, hungry band from a corner of the rock scene where optimism and desperation still shake hands daily.
The first chord hit like a sawed-off shotgun—loud, raw, unrefined, the kind of sound you get from cheap pedals and a determination to overpower any imperfections by sheer force. Their bassist and singer Giuliana Amaral grabbed the mic like it owed her money, voice trembling on the first line before settling into a gritty, earnest rasp that felt more lived-in than her age should justify.
The guitarist created a bluesy yet snarled sound. A thick, midrange-forward growl that rattled glasses reminding everyone why loud rock shows are best experienced in buildings that have already survived a few collapses.
The crowd wasn’t ready for them, but Band.inc didn’t wait for permission. They started with “Queen of Devotion”, namesake of their latest album, and drove through their set with a feverish, white-knuckle urgency.
By the time they tore through “Midnite Rider” the room had shifted. People leaned forward, nodding, grinning, letting themselves get pulled into the fire. Band.inc didn’t just leave the stage victorious. They left it smoking.
John 5 – The Neon-Grinning Guitar Ghoul Loose in the Heartland
John 5 emerged like a figure pulled from the deepest recess of rock mythology — not the over-the-top theatrics of stadium tours, but the glam-horror mystique of someone who has lived inside the instrument long enough to become part of its folklore. He immediately captured the audience’s attention with his distinctive neon yellow Lava Lamp guitar. A piece that deserves its own display case at the Smithsonian if the world ever gets its priorities straight.
He didn’t say a word before he started playing. He didn’t need to. He launched into a barrage of immaculate alternate picking that sliced clean through the air — each note sharp as a razor, each run wicked enough to feel dangerous. His set wasn’t a performance; it was an autopsy of every genre he’d ever touched, executed with the precision of a surgeon and the grin of someone who finds joy in the dissection.
One moment he was tearing through metal riffs with surgical brutality, the next he switched to country picking so fast and clean it would have made Nashville old-timers mutter curses under their breath. Then came the jazz chords — so smooth, so impossibly clean that you could almost smell the phantom cigarette smoke of a late-night club somewhere far from Illinois. Watching John 5 play is like watching a man peel back dimensions. The crowd wasn’t reacting to songs — they were reacting to events.
His band held the line with the intensity of a duo defending a castle. The drummer, Alejandro “The Great” Maricardo, hammered out machine-gun rhythms, every fill landing like a message sent in Morse code from the front lines.
The Mötley Crüe medley was the moment where everything broke open. Familiar riffs surfaced like ghosts from rock’s past before mutating into twisted, reimagined forms. People screamed in recognition, then fell silent in awe when John 5 turned the melody inside out, reassembled it, electrified it, and hurled it back at the room. It was thrilling, a little unnerving, and completely unforgettable.
He left the stage without the showmanship of a rock star, but with the cool withdrawal of a magician who just performed a trick too good to repeat.
Ritchie Kotzen – The Six-String Street Prophet Dragging Soul Through the Dirt
Then the room went quiet — not dead quiet, but that charged, anticipatory quiet that comes when a crowd knows the next thing is going to land differently. Ritchie Kotzen walked onto the stage like a man stepping into the home he built himself. Nothing flashy. No dramatic lighting cue. Just presence. His guitar already strapped on, cable already plugged in, like he had been ready long before anyone knew it.
Kotzen’s first notes of “War Paint” were a slow, deep inhalation — warm, saturated, pure. His tone isn’t just sound; it’s temperature. You feel it on your skin. His voice followed with that same impossible texture: buttery smooth one instant, torn and emotional the next, a mixture of soul and rock and blues that doesn’t ask your permission to affect you. It just does.
Kotzen plays with a kind of discipline that borders on the spiritual. Every phrase matters. Every bend feels like a revelation. His backing band followed him with reverence — the bassist weaved melodic counterlines that wrapped around Kotzen’s chords like ivy, the drummer lifting and dropping the dynamics with the instincts of someone who breathes in time signatures.
Halfway through “These Doors,” something shifted in the room. People stopped talking. Even the bar noise died. There are moments in concerts where a crowd becomes a single organism, breathing in unison, listening in unison — and this was one of those moments. Kotzen didn’t force it; he simply opened a door and let everyone walk through.
Then “Doin’ What the Devil Says to Do” arrived, not as a performance, but as a confession. The solo built itself slowly, almost reluctantly, as if Kotzen were coaxing it out from somewhere deep in the floorboards. People watched with stillness usually reserved for church pews. His eyes stayed closed the entire time, fingers moving with the kind of precision that doesn’t come from muscle memory alone, but from years of learning how to translate emotion into movement.
“Love is Blind” was delivered with such fragile sincerity that it felt like the world had narrowed to just the stage lights and the breath of the man behind the microphone. The final chord hung in the air longer than physics should allow, then dissipated into a wave of applause that wasn’t loud so much as it was full. The kind that comes from people who know they saw something honest.
After the final song, the wind outside had turned colder. People walked to their cars a little quieter, a little slower, still carrying pieces of the night with them. The Apollo AC creaked again as the lights dimmed, settling its bones after another long evening of sound and sweat and truth.
It would hold the echoes until the next band came along to shake them loose.
