Avenged Sevenfold and Good Charlotte brought nostalgia, chaos, a strange experiment, and a whole lot of fire to Tampa. The night getting there was a little more complicated.
By the time Avenged Sevenfold finally took the stage at MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre on August 18, Tampa had already given us a DJ set, a band nobody could actually see, enough Good Charlotte nostalgia to briefly forget what year it was, and Florida heat serious enough that the venue itself had posted an elevated heat warning for the show. Some of the people at barricade had apparently been waiting since noon.
I had the opportunity to photograph Avenged Sevenfold and Good Charlotte, with Jayden Hammer and STATICA opening the night, and let me tell you...
I have a very mixed review.
Jayden Hammer
Starting with Jayden Hammer, I went into her set not really knowing what to expect.
Hammer is a Los Angeles-based heavy artist and producer who has been steadily releasing her own material, including the 2025 single “Searching 4 a Feeling” and, most recently, “SUNSHINE,” which arrived August 5, less than two weeks before the Tampa show. Her own site describes her as both an artist and producer, which makes the decision to open the night behind the decks make a little more sense in context.
She came out DJing, performed some interesting covers, and eventually played original material. There were pieces of the set that caught my attention, but unfortunately, I felt like there was a lot of dead air throughout the performance, and the stage presence just wasn’t there for me.
An opening slot like this is brutal in its own way. You are walking onto a massive stage while half the crowd is still finding seats, buying drinks, sweating through whatever black band shirt seemed like a reasonable choice before stepping into Florida in August, and waiting for the names at the top of the poster. You have to convince them to look up.
When you’re performing in front of a crowd the size of the one that can fill MIDFLORIDA, stage presence is extremely important. You have to grab the audience’s attention and keep them engaged, especially when most of them did not necessarily buy a ticket to see you.
For me, Hammer never quite filled all that space.
STATICA
Then came STATICA, and when I say I didn’t get one photo, I mean I didn’t get one photo.
The entire performance was hidden behind a massive video screen. We couldn’t actually see the performers. We were essentially watching a video screen while the music played, which creates a fairly obvious problem when you are standing there holding a camera and your entire purpose for being there is to photograph the people making the music.
For my Tampa people, you already know where I’m going with this.
If I wanted to see men in cages, I would have gone to The Castle.
We ended up leaving after the first song because there was simply no way for us to get usable photographs.
Here is where the whole thing gets considerably weirder, though: STATICA wasn’t actually some mysterious opening band.
It was Avenged Sevenfold.
The band surprise-released the four-song STATICA EP on July 23, just before this tour began, then started literally opening for themselves under the STATICA name. The project pushes even further into the electronic experimentation Avenged Sevenfold has been playing with in recent years, bringing robotic vocals, synths and electronic elements into the mix. During these opening performances, the band has deliberately remained out of sight while playing all four songs from behind the stage.
Conceptually? I actually get it more now.
It’s weird. It’s experimental. It deliberately removes the traditional idea of watching five guys stand onstage and perform songs in front of you. Considering where Avenged Sevenfold has gone creatively in the years since Life Is But a Dream…, none of that is especially shocking.
From a photographer’s standpoint?
Absolutely terrible.
There is something kind of hilarious about getting credentialed to photograph Avenged Sevenfold, standing directly in front of Avenged Sevenfold, and still somehow being physically incapable of photographing Avenged Sevenfold.
I suppose they would eventually give us another chance.
Good Charlotte
Then Good Charlotte took the stage about 10 minutes early, and WOW.
They opened with “The Anthem,” and the amount of pyro, energy, and nostalgia hit me immediately. Their vocals sounded great, the crowd woke up almost instantaneously, and for a moment, I felt like I was a kid again.
This is where nostalgia shows can occasionally go wrong. There is a difference between watching a band that still performs its old songs and watching a band slowly become its own tribute act.
Good Charlotte did not feel like a tribute act.
They were an absolute pleasure to watch.
Their stage presence was everywhere. They worked the entire crowd, moved across the stage, and you could tell they were having a great time up there. That feeling translated almost immediately into the audience because this wasn’t a band patiently waiting for everyone to recognize the next single. They were actually performing the songs.
And yes, there were plenty to recognize.
“The Anthem” was followed by “Girls & Boys” and “Riot Girl,” and the set continued digging through The Young and the Hopeless, The Chronicles of Life and Death, Good Morning Revival and the rest of the catalog. The entire crowd was singing along. Their Tampa set even marked the band’s first show in the city in 16 years.
They are not simply touring on the strength of those memories, either. Good Charlotte returned in 2025 with Motel Du Cap, their eighth studio album and first full-length in seven years. Tampa got “Rejects” and “Bodies” from that record tucked into a set otherwise stuffed with songs people have been screaming since flip phones were considered advanced technology.
And somehow it worked.
The newer material didn’t derail the nostalgia, and the older material didn’t make the current version of Good Charlotte feel irrelevant. If anything, hearing the entire amphitheater scream “The Anthem” more than two decades after it was released was a pretty solid reminder that some songs simply refuse to die.
At one point Joel Madden even opened a pack of Pokémon cards during the set, which was definitely something I did not expect to see at a rock concert.
There was pyro. There were massive singalongs. There were Pokémon cards.
Sure. Why not?
From a photographer’s perspective, Good Charlotte were an absolute dream to shoot. After spending part of the evening staring helplessly at a giant screen where a band theoretically existed somewhere behind it, having performers actually moving around, interacting with the crowd and giving us something to photograph felt almost luxurious.
Good Charlotte absolutely delivered.
Avenged Sevenfold
Then came the moment everyone had been waiting for.
Avenged Sevenfold had technically already performed once that evening, hidden behind a screen as STATICA, but this time there was absolutely no question about who was onstage.
As soon as they came out, the entire place erupted.
Their proper headlining set began around 9:30 p.m., and by that point some fans near the barricade had been waiting for hours. Again, this was Tampa in August. The venue had specifically warned attendees about elevated heat that day. Standing outside since noon for a band that will not actually appear until nighttime is a particular level of commitment, insanity, or probably some combination of the two.
Once the band came out, all that waiting seemed to disappear.
The crowd was absolutely insane. Mosh pits were breaking out everywhere, people were crowd-surfing, and the energy was unlike anything I’ve experienced at a show in a long time.
After the intro, they launched into “Nightmare,” and I honestly couldn’t help but scream along while trying to take photos.
Professionalism has limits.
There is something about hearing thousands of people yell the same words at once that can temporarily erase the fact that you are supposed to be concentrating on shutter speed.
The atmosphere was electric.
And opening the main set with “Nightmare” was an interesting choice for a band that has spent the last few years doing almost everything possible to avoid simply living in its own past. Avenged Sevenfold released the wildly experimental Life Is But a Dream… in 2023, followed it with the standalone single “Magic” in December 2025, and then dropped STATICA with essentially no warning in July. “Magic” came immediately after “Nightmare” in Tampa, placing one of the band's biggest older songs directly beside its newest era.
That contrast says quite a bit about what Avenged Sevenfold is doing right now. They are clearly not interested in becoming a museum exhibit for City of Evil, Avenged Sevenfold and Nightmare, even though they know perfectly well that those records contain songs capable of detonating an amphitheater.
The Tampa set bounced through “Afterlife,” “Shepherd of Fire,” “Buried Alive,” “Seize the Day,” “Hail to the King,” “Nobody,” “M.I.A.,” “Bat Country,” “Unholy Confessions” and “Cosmic.” It was the kind of setlist that lets longtime fans scream themselves hoarse while still making room for the stranger version of Avenged Sevenfold that exists now.
More importantly, the crowd never seemed interested in conserving energy.
This was a crowd on a completely different level. The passion, the movement and the sheer volume of the fans made this one of the most memorable shows I’ve photographed in a while. There are shows where the audience watches a band. This felt much closer to the audience being physically absorbed into the thing happening onstage.
From a photographer’s standpoint, there were definitely challenges throughout the night. Some were normal concert-photography problems. Some involved an entire band intentionally hiding behind a screen while I stood there wondering what exactly I was supposed to photograph.
But when Avenged Sevenfold hit that stage for real, everything came together.
So yes, I meant it when I said this was a very mixed review.
Jayden Hammer had interesting pieces but never completely grabbed me. STATICA is a much more interesting concept after realizing exactly what Avenged Sevenfold is doing with it, but it is still an absolute nightmare if your job that evening involves a camera. Good Charlotte came out swinging with pyro, nostalgia and the kind of stage presence that reminded everyone why those songs have survived for more than 20 years.
Then Avenged Sevenfold turned the entire amphitheater into chaos.
The first half of this night had dead air, invisible musicians and me leaving an opening set without a single usable photo. The second half had thousands of people screaming “Nightmare,” mosh pits multiplying across the crowd, Good Charlotte setting things on fire while Joel Madden opened Pokémon cards, and enough energy to make everyone temporarily forget how long they had been standing in Florida heat.
Avenged Sevenfold and Good Charlotte absolutely delivered, and this was easily one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time.