In over a decade of covering shows in this city, I’ve never been pulled on stage by a touring band. That changed on Tuesday night at the Egyptian Room in downtown Indianapolis, when Islander vocalist Mikey Carvajal reached into the photo pit between the band’s second and third songs and hauled me up alongside him, leaving me with a set of camera angles I never expected to have and a story I’ll be telling for a while.

That kind of night felt fitting for a show built around celebration. The Egyptian Room at Old National Centre was as packed as I’ve seen it in some time, and the occasion was worth it: Flyleaf, marking 20 years since the release of their self-titled debut, the album that introduced Lacey Sturm’s voice to a generation of rock fans and helped define a new era of hard rock.

Opening the night were Heidi & Henry, the acoustic-leaning project from Heidi Shepherd and Henry Fury of Butcher Babies. The stripped-down performance mixed originals with a handful of covers, kicking things off with a rendition of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” that immediately made the case for Shepherd’s range outside of her day job. It was a quiet, disarming way to start a night that would only get louder from there.

Islander picked up the energy considerably. The Greenville, South Carolina nu-metal outfit opened with “Counteract” off their debut *Violence & Destruction*, and the room shifted gears fast. Carvajal spent the set bounding across the stage and into the crowd, and my own brief detour into his performance only underscored how much the band thrives on that kind of chaos. By the time they closed, Islander had done exactly what an opener is supposed to do: leave the crowd primed for the main event.

Flyleaf reunited with original vocalist Lacey Sturm in 2023 after years of sporadic activity, and this tour finds the band leaning fully into their history. Given the 20th anniversary framing, I expected a set dominated by the debut record. Instead, the band pulled just six songs from that album across a sprawling 19-song set that reached across their entire catalog with Sturm at the mic — a choice that speaks to just how deep their catalog runs, even if it means some anniversary purists in the crowd might have wanted more.

What hasn’t changed is Sturm’s presence. She spins and prowls across the stage with the same restless energy that made Flyleaf a fixture of mid-2000s rock radio, and the crowd responded loudest to the self-titled cuts that got the rare airing: “I’m So Sick,” “Fully Alive” and “All Around Me” all landed as the clear highlights of the night, each met with the kind of singalong that only comes from songs people have carried with them for two decades.

Whether this run of shows is a proper victory lap or the start of something more permanent for Flyleaf remains an open question. There’s no clear word yet on new music or how long this touring cycle will last for the band. But on this night in Indianapolis, with a packed room singing along to songs that are now old enough to legally drink, that uncertainty didn’t matter much. The band sounded fully alive, and so did the crowd.

by Kiel Hauck

Kiel Hauck is the editor in chief at It’s All Dead. Over the past decade, he has been a contributor for multiple online and print publications and was most recently an editor at PopMatters. Kiel currently resides in Indianapolis, IN with his wife and their imaginary pet, Hand Dog. You can follow him on Twitter