“Power tripping off twenty minutes / The world’s so small when you’re the center of it.” Indianapolis punk band Pat and the Pissers has gained local celebrity in the last few years with their mix of high-energy, high-volume performances and songs that touch on serious issues like mental health, government corruption, and anti-authoritarianism that have always been prevalent amongst bands in the punk scene.
For their “The End” tour, post-rock instrumental band Explosions in the Sky decided to partner with a local band on each stop of their tour to act as their openers. For Indianapolis, they of course had to select Pat and the Pissers, whose local notoriety drew in some who weren’t even familiar with the headlining band at all. When Pat and the Pissers frontman Alex Beckman polled the crowd with cheers to ask first who had seen them live before and then who had not, it was a little shocking to hear the results–both groups of cheers were fairly equal. For a band that is fairly small in the grand scheme of the modern day punk music scene, it feels incredibly promising to see how much local support they have garnered in just a few short years.
And that support is more than earned. Pat and the Pissers came out swinging, their wild energy immediately reflected by the crowd. They played a mix of their most popular hits and songs off their new (and first full-length) record, “How It’s Done,” and even those who didn’t know the words were jumping around and cheering loudly between songs. It was a wonderful experience to get to see these guys play at Old National Center and likely only a sneak peak at what’s to come for them going forward.
When Explosions in the Sky came onstage, there was a notable shift in energy. It was interesting to witness the change from the loud, wild sound of Pat and the Pissers to Explosion in the Sky’s more moody, melodic instrumentals–and it was even more interesting to realize that while their musical styles are quite different, both bands rocked hard.
Explosions in the Sky has been around since 1999 and their music is primarily composed by electric guitars and drums, with keyboards and synthesizers thrown in here and there. Their opening song, “First Breath After Coma,” comes from their 2003 album “The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place” and runs almost 10 minutes long, setting the stage for the songs to come. They played two more songs from the same album, including ending with “The Only Moment We Were Alone,” and somewhat surprisingly, they only played two songs total off their newest album from 2023, “End.”
This band has the most incredible energy, somehow weaving entire tales with their music even with a complete lack of any spoken lyric. This is, perhaps, a reason why they’ve worked on so many soundtracks for movies and shows (mostly recently for Netflix’s 2025 series “American Primeval,” and in 2021, their album “Big Bend” recorded for use in public television). They are amazing at telling stories through pure ambient sound, evident by the energy of the crowd and the emotions on fans’ faces when different songs played provoked feelings of love, of loss, and of surrender.
It was a wonderful night and enlightening experience to witness two very different types of rock music played back-to-back. While Pat and the Pissers got the crowd amped up with their screaming lyrics and jumping around onstage, Explosions in the Sky allowed them to then be transported into a world created by guitar riffs and drum beats. It is fair to say that anybody who entered this show left feeling, at the very least, as though they had been a part of something.
