Harm’s Way returned to the stage in Chicago over the weekend for a warm-up club date and a memorial show, with guests stepping into the guitar position song by song.
Harm’s Way played their first shows since the death of guitarist Bo Lueders this past weekend, both of them in the band’s home city.
The warm-up came first. On Friday, August 28, the band played Casa Cafe in Chicago with a rearranged lineup. Bassist Casey Soyk moved across to guitar alongside Nick Gauthier, and Drew Brown of Weekend Nachos came in on bass. Vocalist James Pligge and drummer Chris Mills stayed where they were. Fan-filmed footage from the show has circulated since and can be seen down below.
The following night the band headlined an official memorial show for Lueders at the Ramova Theatre, joined on the bill by Twitching Tongues, Weekend Nachos, The Killer and a set billed as Linda Claire. That name matches a Fleshwater song title, and several outlets read the billing as the band performing under another name.
The memorial was originally booked for Bohemian National Cemetery, a Chicago site that has hosted live music for years. It was moved to the Ramova after the Illinois Comptroller’s office opened an investigation into operations at the cemetery’s crematory earlier in August. Everything else about the event went ahead as announced.
The Ramova set was built around guest appearances, with different musicians taking Lueders‘ place across the night. According to those in attendance, it ran:
- “Intro“
- “Human Carrying Capacity” (feat. Taylor Young)
- “Terrorizer” (feat. Taylor Young)
- “Silent Wolf” (feat. Taylor Young)
- “Breeding Grounds” (feat. Andrew Saba)
- “Scrambled” (feat. Anthony DiDio and Andrew Saba)
- “Infestation” (feat. Jay Jancetic)
- “Amongst The Rust” (feat. Jay Jancetic)
- “Temptation” (feat. Taylor Young)
- “Become A Machine” (feat. Taylor Young)
- “Planets Collide” (Crowbar cover, feat. Colin Young)
The guests came from across the hardcore world and from Lueders‘ own history. Taylor Young and Colin Young are the brothers behind Twitching Tongues, and Colin Young was Lueders‘ co-host on the “HardLore” podcast. Anthony DiDio fronts Vein.fm and plays in Fleshwater. Jay Jancetic is a former Harm’s Way guitarist. Andrew Saba is a former Nails guitarist.
The closing Crowbar cover fell to Colin Young, who earlier this month also assembled an all-star recording of the Harm’s Way song “Warriors Will Reign” released through God’s Hate.
Lueders died on April 2 at the age of 38. He co-founded Harm’s Way in 2006 and spent close to two decades pushing the band from straightforward hardcore towards the industrial-edged heaviness of their later records, the most recent being 2023’s Common Suffering on Metal Blade Records. He spent most of 2025 on the road, including support runs with Knocked Loose and Deafheaven.
Away from the band he built a second following through “HardLore: Stories From Tour“, the podcast he launched with Colin Young in 2022, which grew from two friends trading road stories into a long-form interview show and, by 2024, a record label.
