The Aquabats at Showbox Seattle
Every time I hear AquaBats, I’m immediately taken back to my teenage years hanging out at my friend James’ grandparents’ house in the backyard pool. It doesn’t even have to be the song “Pool Party“; every song from them immediately transports me back in time and based on how I saw most of the adults going wild at this show, I imagine it’s a similar story for them. Upon entering the venue, I passed individuals and families dressed in full AquaBats attire and drawn-on mustaches. I even saw a good mix of Black Flag and Alkaline Trio shirts spread throughout the audience. It was like looking at a mix of my teenage past and adult present at the same time.
I’ve always been curious to see The AquaBats live, but for some reason I’ve missed the last few times they’ve toured through Seattle. Luckily, the stars aligned for this show. Because I was so excited to see them live, I regrettably didn’t even look into who their openers were. While hanging out in the stage pit before the first act, one of the other photographers informed me that a historic Seattle band had reunited for this tour. Before we talk about them, let’s talk about the first opener.
Opening this packed house at The Showbox was The Bandulus. This Austin-born ska / reggae / soul sextet has been releasing albums since the late 00’s, with their 6th and latest album released on January 16, 2026. Formed in Austin, Texas, the band has gained international attention by signing with a major European ska label, Badasonic Records. With their continued musical releases and touring, the band shows no signs of stopping soon, so I’d expect another tour on the radar for you to experience their rhythms. It felt just like a night out at Seamonster Lounge.
Originally forming in Seattle in 2000 and then becoming inactive in 2008, power-pop group The Lashes reunited to support The AquaBats for just two shows in Portland and Seattle on this tour. If you go all the way back to 2006, you may have even had the chance to see the two bands play together once before. While the band officially released their debut album Get It in 2006, in May of 2007 their guitarist, Eric Howk, had an unfortunate accident that caused damage to his spine. This didn’t stop him from performing with the band, as they still showed up at Bumbershoot at the end of 2007.
Knowing that sequence of events made the night even more special. While the band hadn’t performed in all those years and only showed evidence of a couple practices on Instagram leading up to these shows, the band commanded The Showbox stage and sounded like a well-oiled machine. Their lead singer, Ben Clark, danced around the stage with the mic stand and even lifted it up to Eric’s guitar for a couple of solos throughout the set. To continue their previous tradition, the band even handed two full pizzas out to the crowd, but that wouldn’t be the only pizza for the night.
Fun side note: in one of The Lashes’ previous Instagram posts, they mentioned that at the 2006 show the lead singer of the AquaBats showed The Lashes a video of a show he was pitching to Hollywood. This show went on to become the children’s musical series, Yo Gabba Gabba!
Before The AquaBats took the stage, one of the security personnel was kind enough to get the crowd’s attention near the front and warn them of some impending crowd surfing. Along with the warning, he even spent time teaching everyone proper etiquette to take care of the folks crowd surfing, as it sounded like it’s fairly popular for younger kids to end up crowd surfing at these shows.
The start of the set was immediately a blast of energy across the venue. Giant blow-up balls were kicked into the audience, and maybe once straight into another photographer’s face. While I can’t recall if it happened during the song “Pizza Party,” at some point there were giant blow-up slices of pizza that joined the party. Originally formed as a “silly punk band satirizing the Orange County punk scene,” the band’s energy really felt like you were hanging out with the cool elementary school teacher, but you grew up and kept that same schoolkid joy. This was evident across the crowd by the number of adults screaming the lyrics to songs titled “Fashion Zombies!”, “Nerd Alert!”, and “Cat with 2 Heads!”
During the song “Pizza Party,” with permission from the parents, the band’s lead singer, Christian Jacobs, invited up a kid who looked roughly 9 years old but sported a proper punk mohawk to chat with the crowd. What followed was an insane, but heartwarming, scene involving the kid, the crowd, and one blow-up slice of pizza. Christian picked up the kid and in what felt like slow motion tossed him out into the crowd to land on the giant blow-up slice of pizza. The crowd then carried that slice of pizza all the way to the back of the floor and then right back to the stage so that he ended up back with the band. While the band supported the crowd surfing, Christian followed it up by saying, “If someone’s on your head and you don’t like it, you can just take their shoes!”
After a couple more blow-up appearances from Frankenstein and a giant bat, we were even graced by the Magic Chicken himself. Many of these characters can even be found on the band’s companion TV Show, “The AquaBats! Super Show!” This fever dream eventually closed out with a 3-song encore that finished with their massive hit “Super Rad!”