Will Wood at the Brooklyn Bowl the day after Halloween was electric. The show featured a costume contest in the middle, meaning that not only did the crowd look like Tik Tok during the pandemic, it looked like COSPLAY TikTok during the pandemic. Which, do not get me wrong, is no bad thing- the entire night felt like I was transported back into my childhood bedroom, sitting on a Discord call, scrolling TikTok, e-dating, saturated colors, LED lights, and online school. Will Wood’s genre is chronically online. When you get past that and let yourself get lost in it, is when you start to have fun.
And fun was had!! Wood was dressed like Beetlejuice, with each of the Tapeworms wearing Sandworm costumes. One comment cleverly called them “Beetle-wood and the Sandworms”. The music was electric, with one of the first songs being “Suburbia Overture”, a six-minute piano-jazz-rock ballad all about suburban culture and Wood’s distaste for it. A crowd I assumed would be dead was nothing of the sort. That song especially had mosh pits going and people screaming when the guitarist played while pretending to use his guitar as a gun (one of my favorite photos of the night). The energy was consistently high with Wood playing hits new and old. My personal favorite of the night had to have been “Black Box Warrior - OKULTRA” since it was the very first of his songs I really got into. It felt full circle to be standing there wearing a Deltarune cosplay, being 20 years old, nearly done with college, listening to a song I had discovered at 14 while a freshman in high school. I’ve grown up listening to this music, and getting the chance to hear it live reminded me of just how much time has passed.
One standout of the night was Wood’s slowed version of “Yes, to Err Is Human, So Don’t Be One.” The song has notes of vampirism, which had to have been why he picked it for a Halloween themed show. That was my first time hearing the song, and I just fell in love with it. Wood’s piano playing is hypnotic, and his lyrics are so complicated and captivating that it’s hard not to love. Everyone in the crowd personally took a stab at cringe culture that night. Cringe is dead, and Will Wood is alive!
Will Wood & the Tapeworms
