Eidola live at Fine Line
Eidola – Fine Line – Minneapolis MN – March 25th 2026
First Avenue and The Fine Line present Eidola with special guests Astronoid and Nerv
Review and photos by Jesse McKinney
Astronoid
Astronoid hit the Fine Line with a style that felt different from the usual opener slot. The Massachusetts band that’s been around since 2012 brought a progressive metal sound that stayed fast and in motion the whole time!. A lot of their set flowed from one song into the next and that worked in their favor! Instead of stopping and restarting the room every few minutes, they kept everything moving in one steady stretch that made it easy to stay locked in.
The vocals stood out right away too. They had that bright, soaring kind of sound that kept reminding me of Claudio Sanchez of Coheed and Cambria, which is one of my all time favorite bands so I instantly became an Astronoid fan! It gave the songs a little lift without taking away from the weight behind the band.
What also stood out was the crowd reaction. This was not one of those sets where people were constantly jumping around or trying to turn the floor into chaos. Most of the room looked more dialed in than wild, a lot of headbanging, a lot of people really watching, taking it in, and staying with the pace of the set from start to finish. Overall a really fun set and look forward to seeing what music they put out in the future.
Nerv
When I first walked into the Fine Line before the show started, one of the first things I noticed was how many of the early arrivals were gathered around the Nerv merch table, talking with the band and hanging around their spot. You could tell a lot of the crowd came to see Nerv play and that was obvious the second they hit the stage. The reaction was already there, and once the bigger choruses started landing, the singbacks got loud fast!
For a post-hardcore band out of Sacramento that has been around since 2017, Nerv came off really comfortable in the room. I almost thought they were a local band for a moment with how many fans they had and the crowd interaction during their set. Their set was very lyric driven, and that gave everything a little more weight. A lot of the momentum came from how naturally the songs moved between emotional dips and those sudden heavier bursts. It kept the set from staying in one lane too long, and it never felt forced.
What I liked most was that the set felt loose without feeling messy. They looked relaxed on stage, and the banter between songs helped with that. It made the whole thing feel personal and easygoing, instead of over-rehearsed or too polished. Even after the set, there were still plenty of people hanging around the merch area, which kind of said the same thing the crowd reaction did. Nerv did not feel like a band trying to introduce themselves to the room. They felt like a band a big part of that room already came to see.
Eidola
A friend had been telling me to check out Eidola for a while, sending songs over and talking them up enough that once I saw they were finally coming through Minnesota I knew I had to be there! After seeing them live, it was pretty easy to understand why he kept bringing them up. They are the kind of band that really clicks if you like technical playing but still want the heavier moments to hit with some force!
From the start, Eidola sounded completely dialed in! The mix of prog rock and post-hardcore gave them a lot of room to move, but nothing felt cluttered or hard to follow. There were a lot of tempo changes and shifts in feel, and honestly that was one of my favorite parts of the set. They made those turns feel smooth instead of showing them off, and the whole thing kept moving in a way that stayed interesting without losing any weight.
The vocals were a huge part of why it all landed so well live. The clean vocals sounded great, the harsh vocals hit hard, and the balance between the two gave the set a lot of punch. One of the cooler things to watch was the harsh vocalist dropping the mic and picking up a guitar at different points. Little moments like that made the set more fun to follow, especially because the whole band moved around a lot but never lost that tightness in their playing! That was probably the part that impressed me most. Eidola had a ton of stage presence, and it was wild seeing how much they could move while still keeping everything so sharp.
You can definitely hear some shared DNA with Dance Gavin Dance too, especially with Andrew Wells being the founder of Eidola while also taking on a bigger vocal role in DGD after first touring with them on guitar. Sergio Medina has that crossover too, with live and studio work tied to DGD, and he is also a founding member of Royal Coda. Sergio is insanely fun to watch live, his technical ability is unreal and he is all over the stage, jumping around and jumping off the speakers, while still keeping his playing technical and clean. Even with all of that, Eidola never came off like a side extension of anything else. They sounded completely like their own band, and I already know I will be there the next time they come through!
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