“Alive and Kicking” is one of Nonpoint’s most popular songs, and a fitting slogan for the band’s existence. No matter where you are, or when you are, you can count on Nonpoint swinging through town sometime soon. The kind of band you think to yourself “Hey whatever happened to Nonpoint” only to look them up and find they’ve been consistently working, releasing albums in 2014, 2016, and 2018, and they put out a new single just last month. Not only that, their 2014 release, The Return was their highest charting ever.
Over their two decades together Nonpoint have amassed a catalog deep enough that during their opening set for Mudvayne and Coal Chamber on the Psychotherapy Sessions in Irvine, California they didn’t play their biggest ever hit, the 2004 cover of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” and I’m not the slightest bit disappointed. Instead, they rip through a brisk, half hour set without any downtime. Where other bands have let the weight of age bring down their formerly limber nu-metal stage dancing Nonpoint soldier on with eager leaps that crash down like Godzilla upon poor Tokyo.
Opening with Statement bruiser “Victim” and closing with To the Pain’s mighty “Bullet with a Name,” if Nonpoint was at all rankled by not having headliner status - an early joke as Elias Soriano introduced the other bands on the bill before turning to Nonpoint’s massive, all caps, banner and deadpanning “And we are… Korn'' provoked honest laughter - it didn’t bleed through to their triumphant, inspiring performance.
