The Killers Bring Battle Born Tour Into Boston

The Killers are one of the few modern era bands who seem to find relative ease attracting a wide age range to their fan base; attending one of their live shows makes it pretty clear why. The Killers brought their sold out show to Boston’s Agganis Arena on Monday night. The show was the band's first performance in over a week due to lead singer Brandon Flowers’ battle with laryngitis. Flowers appeared to have fully recovered from his illness just in time to prove why he is mentioned among the best frontmen in the industry today.

The band opened their set with two new songs off their latest album, Battle Born, and continued to show their latest release plenty of love throughout the night. Things were kicked up a notch about halfway through the set when The Killers launched into classic hits such as “Human” and “Somebody Told Me” before bringing things down a bit for the new ballad “Here With Me,” in which they turned the stage lights down and encouraged fans to light up the arena with their cell phones, to which the Boston crowd happily obliged.

Throughout the night Flowers worked the crowd with a mesmerizing stage presence. He continuously made mention of what he defined as “an unbreakable bond” between the city of Boston and the band’s hometown of Las Vegas, saying that the songwriter of the theme to the classic Boston based sitcom Cheers hailed from Las Vegas, Nevada. He even took things a step further, leading the band through a cover of the theme song, “Where Everybody Knows Your Name.”

The main set was closed out with the back to back combo of two of the band’s biggest hits “Mr. Brightside” and “All These Things That I’ve Done,” the latter of which was finished off with confetti pouring out of cannons on both sides of the stage.

Due to Flowers' recent vocal troubles there was a bit of doubt as to whether or not there would still be an encore for the show, but sure enough the band came back for three songs, all from separate eras of the band's career. The show stopping version of “When You Were Young” concluded with fireworks and sparks raining down from the rafters. The final song of the night was the title track from the new album, “Battle Born,” during the bridge of which Brandon Flowers introduced his band before stepping down in front of the stage to shake hands with all the fans in the front row.

The Killers stage production throughout the night was top notch, on par with artists such as KISS, Tool, Van Halen and other classic rock artists whose shows I have had the pleasure of witnessing in the last year. The combination of pyrotechnics, confetti, visuals, and the stage presence of frontman Brandon Flowers was outstanding throughout the whole night and had the entire crowd fired up from the opening note to the final bow.

Opening the show were Canadian sisters Tegan & Sara and their backing band. The bands sound can be described as a folk based, electronic backed form of indie-rock that seemed to register very well with those who came out to see The Killers. Tegan & Sara made numerous references to Boston’s resident NHL team the Boston Bruins stating that when they were growing up they played a table hockey game and would always play as the Bruins leading them to be quite excited to play in the same city as the team.