Twenty years after Still Searching landed on Vagrant Records and charted at No. 15 on the Billboard 200, Senses Fail is going back in — all the way in. The New Jersey post-hardcore act is performing the album front-to-back every night on their current North American run, and Houston gets the treatment on Wednesday, December 2 at House of Blues.
About Senses Fail
Formed in Bergen County, NJ around 2001–2002, Senses Fail built their following on a sound accurately described as a slick amalgam of post-hardcore muscle and emo heartbreak. Fronted by Buddy Nielsen, they came up out of the screamo wave of the early 2000s and navigated toward melody with enough conviction to actually grow. Eight studio albums in, the band has long since earned the right to revisit the record that broke them.
The Album
Released in October 2006 on Vagrant Records, Still Searching was Senses Fail’s second studio album and the one that widened the door considerably. It de-emphasized the screamed vocals that defined their earlier work, leaning harder into emo’s melodic pull without fully abandoning the band’s post-hardcore core. The result had real commercial lift — that No. 15 Billboard 200 peak — without feeling like a compromise. Singles “Calling All Cars” and “Can’t Be Saved” carried radio weight, and the album’s dark conceptual thread — a character losing their religious faith — gave it enough substance to hold up to this kind of anniversary treatment. Twenty years is a long time to have an album mean something. This one still does.
The Booking
The House of Blues Houston Music Hall is a reasonable call for this tour. This isn’t a nostalgia act playing below their ceiling — it’s a band with a devoted fanbase that can fill the room on a December Wednesday. The venue gives the show physical weight without inflating it into an arena spectacle, which would be exactly wrong for an album that works in intimacy. Houston is stop No. 10 on a 21-date run stretching from Los Angeles to Brooklyn, November 19 through December 18. The Texas leg hits Dallas November 30, San Antonio December 1, then Houston — three nights, three cities, rapid fire.
Koyo and Initiate open the show. Both are worth arriving early for.
Tickets
Doors are at 6:00 PM. General on-sale is June 26 at 10 a.m. local time via Ticketmaster. Citi card pre-sale ran June 23; artist pre-sale June 24. See more upcoming Houston concerts.