Hot Mulligan – Palace Theater – St. Paul MN – December 2nd 2025

Palace Theater and First Avenue present Hot Mulligan live on December 2nd 2025

Review and photos by Max Trelstad

On December 2nd, Post-Emo outfit Hot Mulligan made a stop in freshly-showed-on St. Paul supporting their new LP “The Sound a Body Makes When It’s Still”, with openers Drug Church, Arms Length, and Anxious in tow.

To open the bill was Anxious, a hardcore adjacent band from Connecticut, and one of my favorite bands since I first saw them in 2021 during my first semester in college. It’s my 4th time seeing them at this point, and they’ve ripped harder and harder every time since. Maybe I’m biased because The Palace is one of my favorite venues, but the combination of the acoustics and the incredibly tight musicianship from each member blew me away. As the first of four bands on a bill, it can be tough to get a crowd excited about a band they’ve never heard of, but their frontman, Grady Allen, had such a captivating stage presence, and every time I turned to look into the audience, they were jamming and dancing like they knew every chord. 

Next up was Canadian five-piece Arms Length, whom I had never heard of until tonight, and I was thoroughly impressed. With two rhythm guitarists supporting the lead, they sounded enormous. Their group’s name feels kind of ironic now that I’ve had their unique brand of music pumped into my ears, because of how close I felt to the musicians on stage. It felt like each melody was wrapping itself around me in a warm emo embrace, instead of holding me at an arm’s length away. For a relatively new band in the emotional punk music scene, I was impressed as hell at the amount of dedicated fans that came early and knew the second openers’ songs lyric for lyric.

Second to last came Drug Church, bringing their pummelling hardcore to the biggest stage I’ve seen them perform on. This is also my 4th time seeing the group from upstate New York, and I enjoyed it just as much as when they rolled through town a year and a half ago with Alkaline Trio. Every member, and especially lead Vocalist Patrick Kindlon, was bursting with energy, and even though much of the audience hadn’t seen or heard of the group, they crowdsurfed more people than I’ve ever seen for an opening act. Kindlon even told off some of the barricade staff after watching them drop a handful of people during the first crowd-surfing call-out to the audience between songs. 

After a quick breakdown of the openers’ amps and drum kit, the lights went out, and the drone of the crowd rose as each member of Hot Mulligan took their places on stage, while a video introducing their new album played on a screen center stage. When the lights came up on the band, the fans erupted in cheers, and the energy-filled set began. They played through lots of songs off the new LP, but vocalist Nathan Sanville made sure to let the audience know that they’d make sure to play older tracks from their discography. I loved how personable he came off as a frontman, like hilariously complaining partway through the set when he realized how many songs were left in the night’s performance. I also got the impression from his on-stage banter that he loves the fans and is proud of the community they’ve created through the songs they write as a band. Though the moment of the show I loved the most was when Sanville spoke about their hatred for immigration enforcement and ICE raids, and how anyone who felt differently could “get the fuck out of here!”After that statement, the loudest cheers of the night erupted, and I could truly feel the sense of community the band has been able to create through their songwriting and performances.