Ten Years Later, Still Angels: The Cab Brings Back From The Dead to Denver
I’ve been listening to The Cab since high school. 2012, to be exact — the kind of fandom that gets a poster on your wall and never really leaves, even when the band does. So when they announced Back From The Dead, a full-length album and an actual headlining tour after over a decade of near-silence, it felt less like a comeback and more like getting a piece of my own history handed back to me.
I’d already gotten a small taste last year, when they opened for All Time Low. It was great, but it was still someone else’s night. Denver was different. Denver was theirs.
Summit Music Hall filled up fast, and by the time CARR took the stage, the room was already loud in that specific way that tells you everyone paid attention to the openers on purpose, not out of obligation. She’s chaos in the best sense — bratty lyrics, a wardrobe that looks like it fought back, and a stage presence that dares you not to watch her. By the second song she had the whole floor yelling back at her, which is not an easy thing to pull off as a support act. She earned it.
Then came the wait. The lights-down, phone-flashlights-up, everyone-holding-their-breath kind of wait. And when The Cab finally walked out, it didn’t feel like nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake — it felt earned. Alex DeLeon sounded genuinely great, no rust anywhere, and the setlist did exactly what a reunion tour setlist should do: it respected the old stuff without turning the new stuff into filler.
“Every Universe” was the moment that got me. It’s got that same aching quality as “Endlessly” but with more room to it, more atmosphere, like they’ve grown into a bigger sound without losing what made them The Cab in the first place. It’s the kind of song that makes a comeback album feel like more than a victory lap.
The real surprise, though, was “Intoxicated.” Alex admitted from the stage that he genuinely hadn’t realized how much people loved that song — and that this tour was the first time they’d ever played it live. There’s something kind of perfect about a decade-old deep cut finally getting its live debut in front of the exact people who’d been waiting for it the whole time. Longtime fans in the room lost it, myself included.
And then, “Angel With a Shotgun.” I don’t think I need to explain what that song does to a room full of people who grew up on this band. It’s the one everyone came for, the one that turns a venue into a chorus, and Denver gave it back to them at full volume. Ten years later and it still lands exactly the way it did the first time I heard it — maybe harder now, honestly, because I know what it took for them to be back up there playing it.
The Cab called this tour Back From The Dead. Watching this show, it was hard to believe they were ever really gone.
