On Tuesday night, the unassuming underside of Interstate 70 — where it bisects the Denver Coliseum and National Western Stock Show complex — transformed into a concrete cathedral.

With Turnstile at the altar, framed by the towering support beams that hold I-70 up and creating a nave stretching to the west, thousands of fans packed onto the floor beneath the freeway. Every few minutes, a light rail car thundered past the stage, like the swell of an organ, rattling the sanctuary.

What might have once seemed like an unlikely setting for worship became, for one night, a house of sound, light and energy.

Turnstile, the Baltimore band with roots in hardcore but an uncontainable expansion of the genre, delivered a set that felt both feral and communal. Their songs swung from breakneck riffs and pounding rhythms to moments of shimmering, almost ethereal melody, anthems that invited as much sing-along as moshing.

The crowd responded in kind: pits churned, kids surfed overhead and thousands shouted back lines from the night’s hymnal, Never Enough, the band’s latest album. In a setting defined by concrete, steel and asphalt, Turnstile’s blend of aggression and uplift felt like a liturgy of connection, noise turned into a shared rite.

One fan, a Denver resident who said he usually attends about 30 concerts each year, didn’t hold back, calling the combination of the band’s energy and the venue a “religious experience.”

Project 70 itself was as much on display as the band. Conceived by AEG Presents as a pop-up venue carved into Denver’s downtown infrastructure, the site turns a stretch of the I-70 viaduct into a 10,000-capacity performance space.

The effect is gritty and monumental at once: rib-like concrete beams overhead, trains streaking past, the city’s industrial innards woven into the show. Organizers billed it as an experiment in reimagining overlooked industrial spaces as cultural stages. On its first night, with Turnstile breaking it in, the gamble paid off.

Another fan called it “a 10/10” experience, noting the way passing trains and the freeway deck overhead made for an unmatched show location. Where he might go see a band that he’s only somewhat a fan of at Red Rocks, just because it’s Red Rocks, the same is now true for Project 70, just because of the venue experience.

Turnstile played songs from their new album Never Enough along with hits from earlier releases, and the crowd treated each as scripture. The pit opened wider with “Blackout,” fans chanted along to “T.L.C. (Turnstile Love Connection),” and the new material landed with equal force. It was a set that moved between chaos and clarity, catharsis and melody—qualities that have lifted Turnstile beyond hardcore purists into a broader congregation.

The band’s last album, Glow On (2021), became a pandemic-era smash and pushed them into the hard rock spotlight. This summer’s Never Enough has only accelerated their rise, earning them tens of millions of streams in just months and cementing their reputation as one of the most important heavy bands of the moment.

Their ambitious tour has stretched from coast to coast in the U.S., with international dates booked across Europe, Australia and South America. Denver’s Project 70 show felt less like an stop on a tour, than a milestone in a rapid ascent.

Some fans noted the sound was uneven during the opening sets, with volume and clarity shifting depending on where you stood beneath the viaduct.
The stage was lit mostly from behind, which gave Turnstile a dramatic silhouette but not giving the audience the kind of full-stage lighting most venues offer.

And while the freeway overhead offered some cover, rain or snow would have left parts of the audience exposed. Still, those concerns felt minor in the moment, overwhelmed by the sheer novelty of the setting.

Logistics, sometimes the downfall of pop-up venues, were mostly handled with precision. Security lines moved in minutes, merchandise vendors stretched along a walkway that funneled fans into the space, and with more than enough porta-potties and beer tents, waits were short. Only the post-show rideshare pickup was bottlenecked, as thousands exited the area at once, flooding the narrow streets and sidewalks nearby. But that’s true after many big downtown events.

AEG Presents president Don Strasburg said that kind of experimentation was the point.

Strasburg said his goal was to make something unique, and that he was inspired by similar projects around the world.

“I had seen pictures of stuff in Europe, activating those kinds of spaces, and it just looked like it’d be a really neat environment to create an urban Block Party.”

And as for the pairing of Turnstile and Project 70?

“Round peg, round hole,” he said.

Turnstile was the right band at the right time to open a venue built on energy and grit, he explained. With the site’s industrial zoning allowing shows to run late without curfews, Strasburg said the focus is simply on the fan’s experience.

“Our job is to understand what kind of experience the audience for any kind of artist would want.”

That sense of scale and ambition resonated with the crowd. One described it as “the best show I’ve seen in Denver.”

The combination of raw infrastructure and raw emotion gave the night a feeling of discovery—like being present for the first chapter of something with staying power.