Breaking Benjamin, Chevelle, Starset and Kami Kehoe Live at Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre

Breaking Benjamin’s Fall Tour 2026 rolled into Toronto’s RBC Amphitheatre on September 9, the same night Toronto FC beat Nashville SC 2-1 at BMO Field. We could all hear the national anthems, the fans, and see the fireworks from the entrance gate before the first band took the stage.

Getting to that gate came with its own drama. As I approached, my feet got tangled in a very small polypropylene shipping strap left on the ground and I went down hard, the kind of fall that felt more like stepping into a trap than tripping. A few people came over to check if I was okay. I was shaken but fine, and thankfully nothing was broken, cameras included. The only thing that took a hit was my dignity.

Rain had been threatening all day and turned into a light drizzle during the drive in, but it held off completely once the show started. The heat did the opposite of what you’d expect, climbing as the night wore on instead of cooling down.

Attendance looked strong, somewhere in the 8,000 to 10,000 range, even though the show landed the day after kids went back to school following Labour Day. It didn’t feel like a soft night. The venue looked close to full from where I stood.

This was my second time catching both Breaking Benjamin and Chevelle, but my first time seeing Starset and Kami Kehoe live. All four bands have had new material in rotation on SiriusXM’s Octane channel throughout the year, so a lot of the crowd clearly came in already familiar with the newer songs.

Kami Kehoe

Kehoe opened the night and made the most of her set, drawing from her new album Love Is a Weapon, including “Psycho,” “Something in the Water,” “UR Gone,” “Fade Out” and “The End,” plus “Love Is a Weapon” itself. She stepped behind the kit at one point during “Sleep When I’m Dead,” a reminder that she started on drums before she ever picked up a mic. Closing with “Dopamine” from her debut record tied the set back to where she started. It was a short set, but it did its job introducing her to a Toronto crowd that mostly hadn’t seen her before.

Starset

Starset followed with only eight songs, but the production made up the difference. For the first two songs, Dustin Bates stood shrouded in a dark robe and a masked crown inside a lit archway at center stage, while the rest of the band performed in matching white and silver suits with full face coverings. The drummer and the keyboard player each sat elevated on their own riser above everyone else, while a violinist and cellist worked alongside the guitar and bass on the main stage. They moved through ‘p a r a d 0 x 1 c,’ ‘Carnivore,’ ‘Brave New World,’ ‘Monster,’ ‘SILOS,’ the unreleased ‘a n n 1 h 1 l a t 1 0 n,’ ‘TokSik’ and closer ‘My Demons.’

Chevelle

Chevelle’s stage setup included five portrait-style visual panels behind the band, and the performance backed up the visuals. The crowd sang along hard through most of the set, and a small mosh pit opened up on the floor. At one point, before launching into ‘Comfortable Liar,’ Pete Loeffler addressed the crowd directly, talking about how organic the whole thing is, just three guys with their instruments, no tricks involved, and asked the crowd to scream if they wanted ‘real shit.’

Breaking Benjamin

Breaking Benjamin closed the night, and they know how to make an entrance. Their intro leaned on nostalgia, with a Windows XP style screen and a LimeWire style search running before the whole thing “crashed” to the crowd’s delight, a callback to an era a lot of the audience clearly remembered firsthand. Benjamin Burnley told the crowd the band has been coming to Toronto for 29 years, and thanked fans warmly throughout the set.

One thing I hadn’t seen in the pit before: a portable air conditioning unit, with a long black flexible duct hose running along the floor to the base of Burnley’s mic stand. Usually musicians just have a small floor fan to keep cool on stage, so seeing an actual AC unit built into the setup was pretty cool, not something I’d even thought of as an option before.

Brian Medeiros, formerly of Red and Otherwise, has been Breaking Benjamin’s drummer since May 2026, taking over from James Cassells, who filled in for about eight months after longtime drummer Shaun Foist stepped away in late 2025 to focus on treatment for Hashimoto’s disease.

The band closed the set the way you’d expect from a group with two decades of hits behind them, running through ‘Breath,’ ‘Awaken,’ ‘Failure’ and ‘Dance With the Devil’ before finishing on ‘The Diary of Jane.’ Burnley thanked the city one more time before the final song, telling the crowd they love Toronto and want to come back soon.

I left before the last song to get a head start on the crowd, and as I walked out through the front gates, I could hear the whole audience singing along to ‘The Diary of Jane.’ Hearing it made me wish I’d stayed, just to sing along with everyone else. Next time, I will.

A huge thanks to Mahlet Sintayehu at Live Nation for the accreditation.

BREAKING BENJAMIN

CHEVELLE

STARSET

KAMI KEHOE

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Drew Osborne

I’m Drew, the founder and editor of Front of the Stage. I have a strong love for music and photography, which started at a very young age. There’s just something I love about experiencing live music and capturing memories that will last a lifetime, and that’s how Front of the Stage came to be.