Almost exactly six years to the day of Alkaline Trio’s tour-closing date at Brooklyn Bowl last Saturday night, one of the band’s two frontmen, Dan Andriano, played a much smaller solo set at a since-shuttered downtown Las Vegas venue.

Faced with several Alkaline Trio song requests back then, Andriano confided in the crowd that he missed performing with his main band. It was a striking admission since Alkaline Trio never really stopped even when Andriano’s partner-in-crime, Matt Skiba, got recruited to join Blink-182.

The band just slowed down, drastically in terms of tour dates and arguably a bit in terms of quality too. Alkaline Trio played Brooklyn Bowl as part of its Is This Thing Cursed? tour a year-and-a-half later, in late 2019, but the show was uneven.

The performance certainly wasn’t all bad, but energy from both the band and the crowd waned throughout the set.

That’s something that didn’t happen this time around.

From the moment Skiba skipped onto the stage donning a black-and-white suit that matched with Andriano, Alkaline Trio were wildly engaging and all-around exceptional.

The pair, along with new punk-veteran drummer Atom Willard, looked invigorated from the moment they launched into the riffy “Hot for Preacher,” the opening track on new album Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs.

The 80-minute set was predominantly occupied by songs off Blood and 2001 commercial breakout From Here to Infirmary. While tracks like the Skiba-led “Stupid Girl” and Andriano-crooned “Crawl” got the largest reactions, the band took visible glee in belting out the new tracks.

The chemistry between Skiba and Andriano that has kept the Trio afloat for nearly 30 years was best on display mid-set when they glanced at each other while trading vocal parts throughout “Break.”

“The best we’ve ever played that song,” Skiba announced afterwards.

“Hands down,” Andriano agreed.

Skiba later declared Las Vegas, “one of my favorite shows of the tour, and I’m not just saying that,” towards the end of what felt like a celebratory night. Skiba later paged all members of support acts Drug Church and Worriers to the stage for a photograph to commemorate the tour.

Worriers, the alternative-leaning project of auteur Lauren Denitzio, opened the night with 30 minutes of its punchy songs and confessional lyricism. Drug Church then really knocked out the room.

The crowd began flying with multiple mosh pits opening concurrently, as the Albany, N.Y. melodic hardcore band made its umpteenth local performance over the last decade. The fevered crowd reaction was a testament to the old ways of consistent stops in a single market eventually paying off with a dedicated fan base.

Drug Church frontman Patrick Kindlon guaranteed Alkaline Trio fans “who don’t care about us” their spots at the front of the barricade back before the headliners if they momentarily wanted security to rescue them from a wave of crowd surfers.

Kindlon bounced and barked for 40 minutes in a show he’ll never forget considering he got married in the venue later that night after Alkaline Trio finished.

“I’m going to be uncharacteristically sincere here for a moment,” Kindlon said towards the end of the set. “You’re here to see a band that left an indelible mark…a band around long enough to shape many of the bands you see today. A band that’s still vital all these years later, and you never see that.”

Kindlon wasn’t exaggerating the “uncharacteristic” part as he’s typically more wont for sharing witty banter in between songs than heaping praise on a tour-mate. But, if Alkaline Trio were half as locked in for the rest of the tour as it was in Las Vegas, then noticing their vitality was unavoidable.

More than 20 years after Alkaline Trio’s initial rise, Andriano declared that he thought the last five weeks made for, “the best tour we’ve ever done.”

“It’s very nice to be back,” Skiba said.