LIVE REVIEW: FLYLEAF WITH LACEY STURM 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR @ THE TABERNACLE, ATLANTA, GA – JULY 8, 2026

The Tabernacle used to be an actual tabernacle, a working Baptist church built in 1911 before it spent a stretch as a house of blues and eventually became one of Atlanta’s better mid-size rooms, and there’s something almost too on the nose about Flyleaf reopening this 20th anniversary tour under a roof that was built for people to be moved. By 7:30 on a Wednesday the floor was already jammed shoulder to shoulder, stacked balconies filling in fast, the kind of sold out crowd that makes a support band’s night before they’ve hit a single note.

Heal The Hurt got that crowd anyway. Modern metalcore, breakdowns stacked on breakdowns, choruses that reach for the rafters even when the room is only two thirds full at doors. Frontman Trevor Tyson worked the stage like a man who knew this slot mattered more than most, commanding one second and cracking wide open the next, and the response he pulled from an audience that came for someone else told you everything about where this band is headed. They’re calling their next run the No Hope In Hell Tour, which is either a great title or a terrible omen, but on this night it read as a band outgrowing the word “opener.”

Wolves At The Gate followed with controlled chaos, which is a contradiction that only works live. No bass player on stage, which should have left a hole in the low end and somehow didn’t, because Nick Detty’s vocals did the work of filling space anyway, switching from clean to guttural and back like he was flipping a light switch. The songwriting held the melodic stuff and the crushing stuff together without either side apologizing for the other, and by the time they left the stage they’d made converts out of people who’d wandered in only knowing the headliner.

Then Flyleaf, and Lacey Sturm walking back into a room that has clearly been waiting for her. Let’s be honest about what a reunion tour risks: it can be a victory lap for a band coasting on a logo, cashing checks off songs that used to mean something. This was not that. From “In the Dark” onward the band sounded less like a nostalgia act and more like five people who had actual unfinished business, tight and alert in a way that reunion shows rarely manage. “Chasm” and “Again” kept the momentum without dipping, and by “Fire Fire” the floor was already moving as one body.

The middle stretch is where the show earned its keep. “Beautiful Bride” and “Great Love” gave Sturm room to show the range that made her a strange, singular frontwoman in the first place, that ability to go from a whisper to something closer to a scream inside a single line without it feeling like a trick. “Cassie” turned into one of the night’s real singalong peaks, thousands of voices carrying a melody that’s been sitting in a lot of people’s chests since high school. “Freedom” and “Stand” kept the back half of the set from sagging, which matters more than fans usually admit, because plenty of bands twenty years in start coasting on the deep cuts.

“Cage on the Ground,” “This Close,” and “Saving Grace” gave the set its emotional spine, “Saving Grace” in particular landing with a weight that had nothing to do with production and everything to do with a room full of people who’ve clearly lived with this record for two decades. “Call You Out” and “Fully Alive” turned the floor into one big chorus, “Fully Alive” especially becoming the kind of singalong that makes a 2,600 capacity room feel like it holds twice that many bodies.

“Sorrow” and “So I Thought” kept things from tipping into pure victory lap territory before the show’s actual gut punch arrived. When “I’m So Sick” hit, the room didn’t just sing along, it detonated, that riff still sounding like a door being kicked off its hinges after all these years. It’s the song that made people outside the Christian rock scene pay attention back in 2005, and hearing it land that hard in 2026 makes the case better than any anniversary press release could. “All Around Me” closed the night, and closing on your biggest song is the safest possible move a band can make, except Flyleaf sold it like they hadn’t played it a thousand times before, which might be the whole secret to why this reunion works when so many others don’t.

This tour is still rolling, hitting Philadelphia, Boston, Montclair, and Silver Spring in the coming weeks, and if you were the kind of teenager who wore out this band’s first record, don’t sit this one out on nostalgia alone. Go because the band sounds hungrier than the occasion required, and bring earplugs, because “I’m So Sick” still hits like it means it.

Flyleaf Photo Gallery

Heal the Hurt Photo Gallery

Wolves At The Gate Photo Gallery

Setlist

• In the Dark
• Chasm
• Again
• Fire Fire
• Beautiful Bride
• Great Love
• Cassie
• Freedom
• Stand
• Cage on the Ground
• This Close
• Saving Grace
• Call You Out
• Fully Alive
• Sorrow
• So I Thought
• I'm So Sick
• All Around Me

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Live photography by Chris Collett for No Flash Needed. © 2026 No Flash Needed. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without written permission.