Back in July, the new Idobi Summer School Tour stopped in Chicago. It promised a kick-ass show performed by six up-and-coming emo bands, and it delivered.

Billed as a throwback to the ethos of Warped Tour (a bunch of alternative bands playing in one day, in a cross country festival/tour hybrid), Summer School is set indoors (thank god) and in the format of a show instead of a festival (meaning that you don’t have to choose between seeing one favorite band over the other). The whole premise is pretty cool, especially considering that the sponsors’ funds are going toward subsidizing ticket prices to keep them affordable (read more here).

Like Warped Tour, Summer School allows lesser-known artists to gain wider exposure. While at different stages of their careers, all six bands are still somewhat underground, but with growing fanbases—and nearly all of them were available at the merch stands for meet-and-greets, and could be spotted talking to fans at the bar. The overall vibe felt like DIY, yet sleek and well-funded.

The bands brought plenty of energy to their performances. I missed Letdown, the opener (in what is becoming a pattern), but when I walked in Honey Revenge was in the middle of an energetic set that merged Paramore-esque influences with poppy catchiness in “Airhead,” which was pretty much the best way to walk into the show.

Things took a goofy turn when The Home Team came on with dancing bear mascots dancing to their flirty, hybrid pop-metal serenades. Magnolia Park hit us with the heaviest sound of the night, cranking their metal-infused pop-punk and Halloween-anime aesthetic to full high-octane intensity, as seen by their vicious pits and back-to-back walls-of-death.

Scene Queen then brought in the rage with her feminist, self-styled “bimbocore” sound. A lot of pink and a lot of breakdowns, while balancing humor and anger, she was like Barbie trying to open up the pit. Only this pit wasn’t a circle of death, but a “twerk-circle…” which was exactly what you’re imagining. It was entertaining to look around at the crowd and see all the men who had been rocking out to the other bands get quiet as she screamed out lines like, “Please send the coward over / And if that bastard whistles put a knife up to his boner / Cut him.” But the girls were having fun, and they’re who Scene Queen is for.

Finally, Australia-based Stand Atlantic closed things out, keeping a worn-out crowd going with songs like “Deathwish” and the newer “Girls.” For the encore, members of all six bands came back out and covered Linkin Park’s “Faint,” pulling the kind of intensity and joy from the crowd that you’d expect from the beginning of a show, not at the end of a six-hour run.

Idobi Summer School was thoroughly badass, and if this first tour is any indication, I hope it becomes a yearly run, and can’t wait to see what they have planned for the future.

Photo credit: Broadway World