It’s no secret that reunion/anniversary tours are super hot right now. If, like me, you were about 15 years old in 2005, your cup most likely runneth over these days – especially if you were, like me, unable to catch many of these artists when they were first touring and making a name for themselves.

A couple weeks ago, in Ferndale, Michigan, I finally made a dream come true and saw Horse the Band perform their album The Mechanical Hand in full for its 20th anniversary. This record is very near and dear to my heart for several reasons, but I’ll try and condense it down to the most relevant bits: first of all, I’ve never heard anything like it before or since. Combining death metal, hardcore punk, Nintendo-style synthesizers, and melodic pop sensibility (yes, melodic pop sensibility), Horse the Band produced some of the weirdest and most enthralling music of the mid-aughts. Their sporadic touring pace and limited studio output (families, jobs, etc.) only led to fans becoming more rabid.

I remember listening to The Mechanical Hand before I could legally drive on my own. It means a great deal to me – whether it was mowing the yard, playing video games with friends, or whatever else I got up to as a little hellion teenager, this was the soundtrack. It wasn’t always a hit with my friends, but the real ones became Horse appreciators over time.

When I first saw their tour announcement for this year, I figured it was a joke. I honestly thought they were just trolling, but nope, it was all real! At first, I made the baffling decision that I “didn’t really need to see them” in Chicago, playing one of my favorite albums from my formative years. By the time I realized I was being a moron, Chicago had sold out. Luckily, my wife and I have some close friends up in Michigan, and since I hadn’t visited for a while, I pounced on the tickets while they were still under $30 AFTER FEES.

After a super pleasant Friday the 13th drive up to Detroit, we got some dinner and headed to the venue. The Magic Bag is a cool spot, a nice small club with an intimate atmosphere and good sound. The openers were Palefade and Melted Bodies, both of whom also put on superb performances and were the perfect primer to the explosion of sound and color that was about to burst forth.

When the moment came, Horse the Band walked out to deafening cheers and launched right into Birdo. I don’t know the last time I smiled like that. The band had the fans in the palm of their hand, incredible energy, each feeding off the other in a delightfully unhinged display of pretty impressive technical musicianship and a resolute defiance of Horse’s attitude towards re-learning these songs (when the tour was announced, they posted “It’s going to be hard”).

I won’t derail things with a song-by-song breakdown, especially since you can see the tracklist for the album and just know that they played that. I would, however, like to mention how it felt to be on dopamine overload when they dropped into A Million Exploding Suns, when the guitar hit on Soaring Quails, and when Ed Edge nailed his triangle solos. The encore was the cherry on top: a verse or two from Chicago’s You’re the Inspiration and two originals – Murder, and unofficial HtB anthem Cutsman.

As if all that wasn’t enough, the band was kind enough to sign my poster after the show and Ed Edge took a photo with me. I did have to have a friend ask them though, as I’m currently 6 months sober and I require liquid courage to bother people who are tearing down their own instruments after their set. I did manage to get it together to thank them, tell them how much I appreciated the show as a longtime fan, and Daniel Pouliot called me “old school,” which rules.

I’m incredibly grateful to have experienced this show – it meant the world to me and will be one of my most cherished memories for the rest of my days. If you’ve never heard the music, you can still check the album out, but the tour is unfortunately over. Fingers crossed they grace us with another!