Live review: Red Jumpsuit Apparatus live at Debonair Music Hall

Teaneck, NJ – 14 March, 2025

I never really listened to Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. I blame this on a former co-worker at Blockbuster who has become one of my closest friends. For the sake of the story we can call him Chris, ya know, because it’s his name. The only unfavorable memory I have of Chris comes from another slow night where we both had been watching Degrassi The Next Generation on the store’s DirectTV when TeenNick played the video for “Face Down” by the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. I enjoyed the song, he did not. This turned into a week of him using every opportunity to shoehorn a mockery of the track into every conversation, including asking for a review of the 2002 J.Lo domestic abuse revenge thriller Enough, just so he could ask “do you think he felt like a man, to push her around.” 

That’s the backstory of how I ended up in an intimate little venue in Teaneck, NJ on a Friday night in 2025. See I don’t really know much of Red Jumpsuit Apparatus beyond that one song. But an opportunity to review and photograph a show fell in my lap. I considered declining because I knew it wasn’t going to be the crowd I’m more accustomed to, and I was right about all of that, but turns out my oldest is a fan and who am I to turn down the chance to spend a night enjoying music with them? No chance I was missing out on this night out. Sure, it was a bit of a mixed bag of performances, but overall it was a net very positive. 

Didn’t take long for the highlight this evening, it occurred on the first chord struck by Pennsylvania’s Sleep Cycles. The Keystone State quartet have perfected amd built upon that classic East Coast pop-punk sound. The four-piece ingratiate themselves on to the crowd with their self-proclaimed “whiny ass emo shit.” The band brought a delightfully fresh yet nostalgic sound reminiscent of the best of turn of millenium pop-punk.

Currently signed to Fred Mascherino‘s Heading East Records, Sleep Cycles kept the crowd enthralled thanks to beautiful tunes, good energy and fun crowd banter. An argument could be made that the first set of a show is the hardest, taking a cold crowd and creating the energy needed to sustain a full evening of high-energy and crowd involvement. Welp, Sleep Cycles didn’t struggle, hell, Sleep Cycles made the whole art of performing look natural and easy across their 25 minute set. Somebody better call the cops, because Sleep Cycles stole the damn show. If you see these dudes making their way to a show near you, run don’t walk to get there early and soak in the grooves. You will not regret a moment with the four-piece.

Next up to the stage was Maryland’s Heartbent, a heavy pop-emo amalgamation. The quintet were fantastic at what they do. There was a time when I would have been head over heels with these up and comers, but unfortunately for me, that’s a time that has passed. The band had some high points, particularly an impressive cover of My Chemical Romance ‘’s “I’m Not Okay,” amazing guitar work and an unbelievable level of unrelenting energy. It may not have been my cup of tea, but by the wonderment in their eyes, I’d say my kid was drinking it all up.

408 was the last supporting act to take the stage. The band was catchy as a West Texas measles outbreak, (and yeah, I know that’s a shitty thing to say but fuck those anti-vax dickbags… oh, erm.. anyway). This is a band that has everything going for it; skillful instrumentation, infectious singalongs and good looks… Shit, this is a band that can really capitalize on the elder emo single mom demographic. 408 is similar to what I assume imagine an emo nite party is like, it’s familiar, it’s nostalgic and it’s fan-friendly. These guys are everything great about the pop-punk scene.  Even if it seems a bit insincere and capitalistic, lets be honest… the heyday of DriveThru Records was quite insincere and capitalistic and that shit still rules.

408 left the stage and it was time for Red Jumpsuit Apparatus… almost. In spite of the great job 408 did to warm up the crowd, technical issues resulted in a significant delay. My daughter and I agreed that the hold-up gave the sound guy enough time to pipe in the entire discographies of Paramore, Panic! At The Disco and Green Day. A long interruption like this was going to take a major effort to bring the crowd back into it. It took some time, but I think RJA succeeded tonight.

The set started off a bit dicey, with frontman Ronnie Winter pacing and trying to get the crowd back on board. He did however seem to turn things around a few songs in with a simple and brilliant gesture; taking a cellphone recording the set from someone in the crowd and performing directly onto the phone. Suddenly, anyone in the Debonair that had been have paying attention to the band and half scrolling their phones were pushing up with the cameras going, hoping to capture their own personal performance.

From that moment on, everything switched for the set. The needle moved from fine to good, crowd participation picked up and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus capitalized on 20 years of experience performing to crowds like this one. When Winter pulled out the acoustic guitar (“Your Guardian Angel”) the crowd swooned. When the band joked about it they know we are there for one song and proceeded to play what Winter called the greatest emo song of all time (Blink-182‘s “All The Small Things”) the building shook. When they closed out with “Face Down,” Red Jumpsuit Apparatus put smiles on every face in the room, including the too-cool for dad 16 year old who accompanied me tonight and left the club with a pep in her step, a smile on her face and (most importantly) an admission that she had a good time hanging out with me tonight.