Live at The Tuning Fork
13 February 2025
Live Review by Music Journalist: Paul Marshall
Friday the 13th Fury: Hed PE, Nonpoint and New Way Home Shake The Tuning Fork to Its Foundations.
Friday the 13th in Auckland. Fitting, really. The walls at The Tuning Fork have taken a fair few beatings over the years, but tonight they rattled like they’d offended the gods of volume themselves.
Three bands. Three flavours of chaos. One seething crowd of black-shirted devotees ready to spill beer, sweat and possibly a little blood.
Local openers New Way Home took the stage with the energy of a band hell-bent on detonating the night from note one. Their track Paper Hearts didn’t so much begin as explode, thrash metal fired like a machine gun going rogue, cymbals splintering the air and guitars chewing up whatever frequencies were left.
The stage was crowded, almost claustrophobic. Drummer Scott Wotherspoon was squashed stage right, half-hidden but impossible to ignore, his skins absorbing the full weight of his thunderous assault. To his left, bassist Romilly Smith was tucked in tight, rhythm section shoulder-to-shoulder, locked together like the engine room of a warship taking on heavy seas.
Up front, singer Richard Simpson wrestled with monitor issues. From where I stood, the backline was punishingly loud, borderline overwhelming for a venue this size. Vocals struggled to punch through at times, and for a band with experience under its belt, the imbalance was surprising. Whether it was a sonic miscalculation or internal friction bleeding into decibels, the mix felt like it was fighting itself.
But rock ‘n’ roll has never thrived on neatness.
Their new single Signals delivered a crushing half-time breakdown that dragged heads into synchronised motion. You couldn’t not head bang along and most of us did. “Have you got some energy left?” Simpson barked. The crowd answered with raised fists and raised beers. Guitarist Christian Humphreys navigated the band’s punishing time-signature shifts with grit and concentration, fingers working overtime. Messy? Yes. Honest? Absolutely.
Next up: Florida’s own Nonpoint, making their first ever New Zealand appearance. You could feel the anticipation coiled tight before they even stepped out.
Frontman Elias Soriano immediately owned the night. He leaned over the lip of the stage, screaming inches from faces in the front row, close enough to fog glasses and probably share bodily fluids. It was intimate, aggressive and oddly euphoric.
The sound? Night-and-day compared to the opener. Clean. Punchy. Balanced. The vocals sliced through the mix like a blade, drums and guitars precisely where they should be.
When Chaos and Earthquakes hit, Soriano had Auckland in the palm of his hand. At one point a scuffle erupted in the pit, a brief flash of testosterone and territorialism, only for the instigator to be swiftly head-locked by a fellow bobble-hatted punter and told to cool it. Disorder policed by the faithful. Chaos at its most poetic.
“Make some noise, NZ!” Soriano roared and they did. Loudly.
“There’s only one thing better than being alive,” he snarled, pausing dramatically. Somewhere near me, a Kiwi voice yelled, “It’s being a Kiwi!” sadly unheard by Soriano, who launched into Alive and Kicking instead. The timing was perfect regardless. The pit detonated properly, a whirlpool of boots and black tees spinning under dim lights.
It was controlled fury, professional, tight, undeniable.
Then came the veterans, returning to the stage almost exactly, one year on from their last Auckland appearance on 14 February 2025.
Born in Orange County, California, originally just Hed before legal necessity forced them into the more politically charged Hed PE, short for Planetary Evolution, later simplified to Planet Earth, these are men who have blurred genres long before streaming algorithms tried to categorise them.
Frontman Jared Gomes stepped forward with a casual menace. “Yo, ready?” he asked.
They opened with “Jesus of Nazareth,” cut from their 26-year-old album Broke, a record they would perform almost in full across the night (with the notable omissions of “Stevie” and “The Meadow,” both too delicate to sit comfortably in a live setting).
Rather than detonating out of the gate, they chose restraint, a slow burn instead of a blast. But from the very first bass pulse, you could feel it: the room leaning forward, locked in.
“Turn me up in the house,” Gomes called to front-of-house. The engineer obliged, perhaps a shade too generously. Between songs, a low, rumbling standing wave hovered like an aftershock, the vocal mic nudged just past its comfort zone. It’s the kind of sonic gamble that adds danger, though occasionally at the expense of clarity.
The lighting remained dark, deliberate, no strobes, a nod to Gomes, who suffers from epilepsy. Subdued but purposeful.
Crazy Legs showcased layered vocal effects that twisted and morphed around the beat. Then there was Boom (How You Like That), rap-metal-punk hybrid energy and hip-hop swagger. This is G-Punk in its purest form: gangsta rap attitude over punk urgency, drenched in Cali sun and rebellion.
At one point Gomes demanded, “I need a towel to wipe this up!” Beer and sweat pouring, charisma intact. The towel arrived, fashionably late, because good rock theatre is about timing.
In a moment of hypnotic unpredictability, Gomes pulled out his adapted melodica, playing snake-charmer phrases that slithered above the low-end rumble. The crowd swayed as if spellbound.
Behind him, drummer Stephen Arango punished his kit so savagely it began to protest, hardware loosening, parts needing mid-set attention. Wood meeting metal in full-contact combat.
At one point, Gomes grins at the crowd and admits, “After 25 years of ganja, I wasn’t sure I was gonna remember all these f***ing words, but I did… don’t do drugs, kids!” It’s classic Gomes: self-aware, sharp, and delivered with that trademark wink that makes the room feel like it’s in on the joke.
What unfolded tonight was another commanding display from the heavyweight champions of the G-punk world. Hed PE don’t just play a set, they architect it. The night was masterfully considered: bursts of chaos giving way to unexpected calm, groove-laden swagger colliding with full-throttle aggression. Through the madness came melody; through the weirdness, even more beautiful weirdness. Styles blurred, genres fused, and somehow it all locked together into one seething, creative force a living breathing organism, known as Hed PE.
Friday the 13th delivered exactly what the date promised: unpredictability, excess and a reminder that heavy music isn’t about perfection, it’s about power.
New Way Home swung hard. Nonpoint delivered surgical chaos. Hed PE reminded everyone why longevity is earned, not handed out.
The beers were spilt. The shirts were soaked. The floor was sticky. And Auckland walked out ringing in the ears and grinning anyway.
That’s rock ‘n’ roll.
Set List:
- Jesus (of Nazareth)
- Killing Time
- Waiting to Die
- Feel Good
- Swan Dive
- Pac Bell
- Crazy Legs
- I Got You
- Boom (How You Like That)
Encore:
- The Meadow
- Bartender
- Renegade
Reviewer: Paul Marshall
Photography by Paul Marshall
WATCH THE LIVE VIDEO at Paul Was There -