Alter Bridge, Daughtry, Sevendust — An Unforgettable Concert Spectacular in Zagreb (2026)
Performers: Alter Bridge / Daughtry / Sevendust
Venue: Zagreb / Boćarski dom / Croatia
Date: Saturday, 31 Jan 2026, 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Alter Bridge, Daughtry, and Sevendust! One hell of a package on a new European tour led by the Florida icons of so-called ‘crunch metal,’ Alter Bridge! Right at the start of the year — in the middle of the European “What Lies Within” tour, no less — Alter Bridge dropped their thrillingly brilliant new studio album “Alter Bridge,” and four years after “Pawns & Kings,” that brought the band back to Zagreb.
Back in November 2022 they played the small hall of the Dom Sportova (with Halestorm and Mammoth WVH in tow — Rockline concert review), but this time they rolled into Boćarski dom (you could loosely translate the name as ‘bowling alley’), a venue that holds around 3,000 people and that, on our previous visits, has proven to be a perfect fit for shows of this size.
This time around, Alter Bridge brought two genuinely outstanding bands with them. Sevendust are now firmly in the legend category of ‘bent’ metal, while modern rockers Daughtry — who also have a solid body of work behind them — are astonishingly popular, largely thanks to the magnetic pull of their exceptional frontman Chris Daughtry.
It was one of those concert Saturdays when everything adds up exactly as it should. With the exception of the roads, where the approaching full moon (in Leo this time) was already making itself felt — sparking the reckless maneuvers we witnessed on the drive from Pivka through Ljubljana and on toward our southern neighbor — everything else fell into place perfectly. First: parking right in front of the venue, and second: a pub with an endless selection of the craziest craft beers right next door. Could you ask for more? A whole army of people streaming endlessly in one direction. A massive crowd from Slovenia too, and from every corner of Croatia, however far-flung. A truly top-shelf spectacular was in the cards.
Fifteen minutes past seven, veterans Sevendust jumped on stage. A band that emerged in the wake of grunge and that cleverly blended classic metal with grunge, hip-hop, and funk influences — which quickly got them slotted into the emerging nu-metal trend. What makes Sevendust special is that they’ve kept the same lineup throughout. The quintet has released 14 studio albums over a long and storied career, and just announced a new one, “One,” in early May of this year! In half an hour, they absolutely demolished it. As expected! Lajon remains an insane frontman! Alongside a venomous vocal performance, he kept the mood sky-high with extra tricks throughout, and his charisma had the crowd hooked in no time. The band is fired up and in brilliant form. The extravagant, face-painted drummer Morgan Rose was going berserk on his kit, while the band delivered an incredibly tight set packed with high-octane combustion, shot through with astonishingly locked-in guitar phrasing that hit like a bomb of pure defiance. Sevendust got the crowd pumped to the max, and half an hour was definitely not enough time with them! They opened with the ancient Black — the debut single from their self-titled first album that also broke them into the mainstream. A track that simply cannot be left out! They also slipped in a brand-new song, Is This The Real You, from the upcoming “One,” while the rest of the set was drawn from the cult albums “Animosity” (2001) and “Seasons” (2003). Miles on the clock, bags of experience! You’d want to catch this band on a headline show — which, unfortunately, would require a transatlantic flight.
One more thing. The band performed without longtime guitarist Clint Lowery, who sat out the tour on medical advice after recently injuring his cervical vertebrae. Stepping into his shoes was none other than Alter Bridge’s own manager Tim Tournier — who some of you may have spotted at one of Myles Kennedy’s solo shows, where he handles bass duties (Rockline caught one of those shows on 21 Jul 2018 at Udine Castle).
Daughtry is a band built around the extraordinary figure of vocalist Chris Daughtry. After making it to the top four in the fifth season of American Idol and dazzling everyone with his vocal performances on a string of covers, his stock was rising fast even before his career properly began. So he formed a band, and with their self-titled debut, they catapulted themselves straight into the ranks of the hottest commercial acts of the new era. Daughtry played for three-quarters of an hour. The set was dominated by material from the two recent “Shock To The System” EPs, which Daughtry released individually and which have gone down especially well with American audiences over the past two years. The band kicked off with three consecutive new singles from the second “Shock The System” EP (Divided, The Bottom, The Day I Die), hinting at a push toward heavier, more driving territory! Massive, down-tuned sound! And Chris right at the center of it all. You genuinely marvel at the chameleon range of his vocal performance. Catchy singles, one after another, each pulling off a high level of musical craft that makes you want to sing along. Anthemic, bombastic, and mostly pitched at a mid-paced groove. The guy has always had a knack for surprising cover choices. Recently, he turned heads again with his take on a song originally belonging to the legendary San Francisco AOR pioneers Journey — tackling their evergreen Separate Ways (Worlds Apart). That classic worked fantastically well in the set in Zagreb too! It was the moment that got even the old-timers singing — those of us who grew up on this music in the eighties. People were turning their heads as I bellowed out every line. Fair enough — I clearly landed in Boćarski dom that evening from another planet entirely! The set also made room for the obligatory hits from the debut “Daughtry” — It’s Not Over and Home, which Chris performed solo in an acoustic version. After Heavy Is The Crown (album “Dearly Beloved,” 2021), the band had just enough time to pull off a theatrical encore (not something you usually expect from a support act), coming back with another recent single, Artificial, and sealing their claim to the top tier. Tightness, sound, crowd interaction. Absolute perfection.
Both Daughtry and Sevendust before them were playing Croatia for the very first time in their careers! That, however, cannot be said for Alter Bridge, the night’s headliners — for whom this was their second show on Croatian soil! Worth adding that none of these three bands have ever played Slovenia, and that’s likely to remain the case going forward. Mark Tremonti did manage to bring his band Tremonti to Tolmin in 2018 for the Metaldays festival (festival review — day three), and Myles Kennedy came with Slash on Slovenia’s Cultural Holiday, 8 Feb 2013, when the famous Guns N’ Roses ‘frog with conspirators’ stopped off at Hala Tivoli (Rockline concert review).
9:15 PM! The crowd had packed into the front rows. Pressed together tight. The place was rammed. I’d say the venue was right on the edge of a sold-out call. Alter Bridge hit, as expected, with material from the new record “Alter Bridge,” and opened by blasting the plaster clean off the walls — launching straight into the attack vehicle that is Silent Divide. The band immediately stunned the room with their near-proverbial perfection: that extraordinary interplay of rhythmic groove and a massive sonic wall of guitar riffing, with the exceptional Myles Kennedy woven right into the heart of it with his vocal brilliance. Myles confirmed early on that he’s also a very, very good guitarist. Alter Bridge use that to the fullest, and Myles is extremely active between tracks with his solo runs too! Next came two “Fortress” favorites — the brooding Addicted To Pain, followed by Cry of Achilles, which the band moved from the encore into the opening section compared to their last tour. That kind of magic trick with the classics poured fuel on the fire and confirmed the extraordinary bond between the band and the crowd! Cry of Achilles was also the first moment where Tremonti and Kennedy — due to different tunings — swapped guitars for the first time during the show. Remember three magic letters you need to live by: PRS! That guarantees a win from the start.
Alongside the venomous groove and the voracious, avalanche-like sonic force that the Alter Bridge name is known for, the band’s other core signature has always been the refined delivery of bombastic, anthemic choruses that burrow under your skin in seconds. Every song left in the set fit that description exactly. Which is why past collaborations with a symphony orchestra come as no surprise — these are compositions you can’t take anything away from. Or add anything to. The concert moved fast and with extraordinary intensity as a result. The energy was brilliant. Wherever you looked, the enthusiasm was absolute. And Alter Bridge were feeling it. That’s what delivered the extra finishing touch — the thing that takes it beyond concert routine into something where you can see, in every single second, a band swinging with everything they’ve got and genuinely loving every moment of it on stage. The dramatic new What Lies Within, then the title-track “Fortress” classic — the magic didn’t let up for a second. The latter the band put back into the live set after several years away from it. The crowd surging, jumping, and knowing every word (especially the first half of the venue, which was absolutely electric). It was in the final stretch of the set that Watch Over You — the acoustic “Blackbird” ballad — painted that picture most vividly, with the entire hall accompanying Myles’s delicate vocal.
Beyond three excellent new tracks, the band drew predominantly from their early era (first four albums). Fair play to them. Burn It Down from the debut is a track that could have found a home on many an album from the grunge era. Both Mark and Myles shared vocal duties on it. Similarly, Mark opened the first verse on vocals on the more recent Tasted And Able.
Before the “One Day Remains” classic Metalingus, at Myles’s insistence, a life-size cardboard cutout of Canadian wrestler Adam Copeland — better known as Edge — made its way up from the crowd! Myles solemnly swore to its amused owner that the band would return it immediately. Tremonti and Edge are longtime friends, after all. Tremonti even has a sticker of the wrestler on one of his guitars, and Metalingus became famous as the track Edge used as his entrance music for years in the ring. In doing so, knowingly or not, he indirectly led a lot of people to discover Alter Bridge. It was a moment that stoked the crowd even higher in the grand finale and pushed the atmosphere to an absolute boiling point right at the end. The vibe was incredible.
In the encore, the band first tackled the dramatic, darkly rolling Blackbird, where through a slow build of atmosphere, Myles once again stunned the room above all with his extraordinary vocal supremacy — followed by the second “AB III” classic, the ferocious Isolation, which brought the final farewell.
What to say at the end? Alter Bridge delivered exactly what we came for — exactly what has kept people following them since the very beginning of their career. They delivered yet another one-of-a-kind concert experience. A bombastic, hour-and-forty-minute show where flawless stage execution, brilliant seasoning of massive groove and crushing guitar phrasing all pass the baton between each other with the precision of a finely honed high-wire act — and through all of it, the brilliant Myles Kennedy finds his place with his vocal force like nobody else could. Personally, Alter Bridge ‘infected’ me with all of the above at our very first encounter (back in June 2008), when, amid the scorching Pannonian plains of Austria’s far east, at Nova Rock festival, without any particular expectations and in a state of total disbelief, I watched them play.
When you factor in the two support acts — Sevendust and Daughtry — you walked out of that concert having gotten far, far more for your €52.00 ticket than most big-name international acts are willing to deliver these days. A show that genuinely fills you up, after which you’re perfectly entitled to wonder whether it can possibly get any better than this.
Text: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik & Edita Klemen
