State Champs Kick Off the ‘Around the World and Back Again’ Tour in Allentown

The anniversary tour rolled into its next leg on Thursday, November 5, and Archer Music Hall in Allentown was more than ready to kick it off in style.

Ten years is a long time in pop-punk. Bands form, break up, reunite, and fade out on shorter timelines than that. State Champs didn’t do any of those things. They kept their heads down, kept touring, kept writing, and somewhere along the way built the kind of fan base that doesn’t just follow a band. It carries them.

Around the World and Back turned ten in 2025, and the anniversary tour is the band’s way of acknowledging what that album meant and what it still means. Allentown got that version of the show, and the room felt it from the first song.

There’s a lyric in “Losing Myself” that Derek DiScanio sees differently now: “We attract what we’re ready for.” In a 2025 interview with Brooklyn Paper, he said fans had asked him to write it out so they could get it tattooed. He was thinking about getting one himself. Some lines earn that kind of permanence. This one did.

DiScanio commanded Archer Music Hall the way he always does: relentless, in constant motion, working every corner of the stage like he was personally responsible for keeping every person in that room engaged. He was.

The rest of the band matched him at every turn with the kind of locked-in precision that only comes from years of doing this together and still giving a damn about every note. Each song landed with the same energy as the last. No coasting, no autopilot. These were people who wanted to be on that stage, and the difference between that and going through the motions is something a crowd can feel immediately.

The setlist struck the balance that anniversary tours rarely get right, honoring the catalog without turning the night into a greatest hits package or a nostalgia exercise. They played “Shape Up,” “All You Are Is History” and “Secrets,” songs that have been living in people’s headphones for a decade, with the kind of conviction that makes them feel new again.

Newer material wove in seamlessly alongside the classics, proof that the band isn’t standing still even while looking back. That’s harder to pull off than it sounds, and they made it look effortless.

Look around any State Champs show right now, and you’ll find millennials who forgot, for a few hours, that they weren’t teenagers anymore. The teenage spirit was alive and loud in Allentown: full verses sung back at full volume, hands in the air, voices cracking in the best possible way.

The quiet moments were rare, but when they came, the crowd filled every inch of them. Then the tempo would spike again and the room would snap back into motion without missing a beat. Push and pull. Chaos and connection. The constant exchange of energy between a band and a crowd that actually know each other: that’s what great pop-punk shows are built on, and State Champs have never forgotten it.

What came through most clearly over the course of the night was how genuinely happy this band is to be doing this. Not performed happiness, not gratitude for the cameras. Actual joy.

They built something real with these songs and these fans, a community that showed up for each other long before the anniversary tour gave them a reason to gather. The room in Allentown was full of that. “Good vibes” isn’t a strong enough phrase for what was in that building. It was the feeling of being exactly where you were supposed to be, surrounded by people who understood exactly why.

State Champs aren’t revisiting the past. They’re carrying it forward to the next city, the next room, the next crowd that knows every word. The tour isn’t slowing down. Neither are they.