This year marks 25 years of The Used, the emo/alt-rock veterans known for their confessional chaos and unbridled vulnerability.

To celebrate, they’ve launched a unique Australian tour: three consecutive nights in each city, with each night dedicated to one of their first three albums. Fans get the rare opportunity to hear full playthroughs of The Used (2002), In Love and Death (2004), and Lies for the Liars (2007) — three albums that helped define a generation of eyeliner-smudged teens and Warped Tour anthems. 

It’s a dream format for longtime fans, but also a clever one. In an era of vinyl variants and deluxe editions designed to boost sales, this tour feels like the live-show equivalent: a series of limited-edition experiences, a sort of collectible performance boxset for those willing to commit to three nights. Still, with 21 dates across Australia (including six in Melbourne alone), it’s clear the idea worked, and fans aren’t mad about it. In a time when international acts rarely venture beyond major East Coast cities, this tour feels like a generous gift.

The quartet consisting of Bert McCracken (vocals), Jepha (bass), Dan Whitesides (drums), and Joey Bradford (guitar) last toured Australia in April 2023. Since then, they’ve released two more studio albums, Toxic Positivity (2023) and Medz (2024), though fans will have to wait a little longer to hear those tracks live.

The band’s connection with Australia stretches back nearly two decades. For McCracken, that bond became more personal over the years. He married an Australian, became a citizen in 2013, and now calls Sydney home.

For the first half of the tour, The Used were joined by Hands Like Houses, with Hevenshe – the empowering solo project of Tonight Alive’s Jenna McDougall taking over for the second leg (August 22–September 6).

Emerging during Tonight Alive’s hiatus, Hevenshe channels the same cathartic energy and defiant punk spirit that made the band a force, and redirects it into a fearless exploration of self. Describing the sound as “life-affirming femme rock,” McDougall leans into the rawness of 2000s punk with an emotional clarity that, when witnessed live, feels both empowering and cathartic.

Fresh off her UK tour, Hevenshe carries the aura of a seasoned musician decades her senior. This is main character music. Yet her songs feel like a reassuring hand on your shoulder, a kindred spirit in sonic form.

Her latest release, Floor Bed, lands like a gritty grunge-pop staple, the kind of song you’d swear you’ve heard before in a coming-of-age montage. In a packed venue, Wish I Had a Friend, a meditation on loneliness, becomes a paradoxical shared experience where isolation and connection collide. Other standout moments included Essential and Trying Not To Feel.

Tonight’s performance at Melbourne’s Northcote Theatre marks The Used’s fifth show in the city, with this evening dedicated to their most commercially successful and emotionally charged album, In Love and Death.

Released in 2004, it quickly achieved platinum status in the U.S. and gold in Australia, propelling The Used into the mainstream without compromising their emotional core. With its tender ballads, orchestral flourishes, catchy pop hooks and relentless bursts of heaviness, the album walks a tightrope between beauty and brutality.

Produced by John Feldmann, In Love and Death marked a departure from the post-hardcore ferocity of their self-titled debut, toward a more polished, melodic sound steeped in grief and emotional depth. Created amid personal tragedy and internal band tensions, the album stands as one of the defining emo records of the 2000s.

Given the framework of the tour, tonight’s setlist was straightforward: twelve songs, no more, no less, allowing fans to experience every emotional beat as intended. While deep cuts were a guarantee, so was the absence of a few of their biggest hits from other records. It’s a sacrifice that comes with the single-album format.

That album-first approach was clear from the start. As the lights dimmed, archival footage and shots from the In Love and Death CD booklet set a nostalgic tone. 

“Are you gonna get emo with me?” Bert asked. It was a call to arms, and the answer was a resounding yes.

First up was the existential opener, Take It Away — a contender for the greatest shot of adrenaline to ever kick off an emo record. True to the album, the mysterious spoken-word intro, whose origins remain unknown to this day, signalled the start of the song. The crowd went wild.

Above the band hung a suspended red heart, bringing the album's iconic cover art to life.

I Caught Fire was next, with the band joined by Hevenshe in a full-circle moment for the artist, who once covered The Used in her Year 8 talent show.

Twenty years on, some things have changed. Jepha now handles the screamo parts in songs like Let It Bleed, and Sound Effects and Overdramatics instead of Bert. While he doesn’t quite match Bert’s feral early-2000s delivery (puke-on-me lore and all), the intensity remains just as powerful live.

Softer moments like All That I’ve Got and Hard to Say offered melancholic reflection, while the frenzy of Listening proved that a crowd of elder emos still knows how to mosh. At one point, Bert even incited a cartwheel competition in the pit, landing one onstage himself.

The night peaked as over a thousand revellers recited the Shakespearean-esque spoken-word intro of I’m A Fake in perfect unison before the music erupted into all-out chaos.

In lieu of an encore, the band included the album’s bonus track, Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie, but rather than performing their cover version, they played the original over the speakers as they took their bows and exited, leaving the crowd feeling like teenagers again, full of raw emotion and nostalgia.

So maybe the three-night format was part marketing, part nostalgia. But when the music still hits this hard and the connection feels this real, who’s complaining?