Internet-Cringe Makes Community Offline at the Wellmont with The Living Tombstone

If you spent any part of your teenage years on YouTube or TikTok, or ever fell down a video game fandom rabbit hole, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve come across The Living Tombstone. On Friday, October 23, the electronic music group brought that corner of the internet to Montclair, NJ, selling out the Wellmont Theater and proving that the things we call cringe can create the most authentic community.

Featuring opening performances from Mystery Skulls and Dom Palombi, both acts kicked off an evening that brought together fandoms far and wide, and the fans that keep them going. 

The energy in the room was like nothing I had ever seen before. I’ve been to plenty of concerts across more genres than I can list, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard an audience cheer as loudly as this one did. For one night, the Wellmont felt like the internet had come to life, bringing together people who grew up loving the same quirky fandoms.

For anyone unfamiliar with The Living Tombstone, here’s the rundown. Known to fans as TLT, the group has spent the past 15 years building a global following through music inspired by online fandoms, specifically those of video games. Its two founding members and vocalists, Yoav Landau and Sam Haft, perform as the masked characters zero_one and Rust, respectively. They’re joined onstage by an assortment of characters including guitarist Armstrong, bassist Tesla, and drummer Doc, all three of whom remain masked in most of their performances.

The band has accumulated millions of YouTube subscribers and billions of streams across various platforms. Making music for fans of My Little Pony, Baldi’s Basics in Education and Learning, Beatsaber, Splatoon, Five Nights at Freddy’s, along with their own independent music, TLT has made their mark across the wide map of the internet.  

In the mainstream, one of the group’s best-known songs, “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” even reached No. 4 on the Dance/Electronic chart. Inspired by the popular horror-game franchise, the song helped establish TLT as a recognizable name among gaming fans. Its music has become part of the internet experience for an entire generation, and even appeared in the movie of the same name which was released in 2023.

The crowd at the Wellmont reflected just how far that reach extends. Most of the audience seemed to be teenagers and people in their twenties, many of whom had been listening to The Living Tombstone since they were young. I was one of them, having first heard their music when I was around 11 years old. Now, as a 21 year old, it was nostalgic to be standing in the same room as others like me, screaming the lyrics like we hadn’t heard them a hundred times before.

There were also younger kids in the crowd with their parents, introducing another generation to the music that has helped define internet culture for the past decade and a half, and showing the power of music and these fandoms as a way of bridging gaps. 

And then there were the costumes.

It felt like almost everyone had taken the opportunity to dress up as a favorite character or show off their love for a particular fandom. Halfway through the set, the band even paused to give a shoutout to everyone who had come in costume. It was the kind of crowd where showing up dressed as a video game character didn’t feel out of place at all. In the group I attended with, we had everyone from DJ Pon-3/ Vinyl Scratch to The Puppet from Five Nights at Freddys, yet no one felt out of place. Nobody was trying to look cool or pretending they weren’t excited. Everyone was just there to have a good time.

That same energy carried over to the performers. Armstrong, Tesla, and Doc stayed masked as their respective characters throughout the show, while zero_one and Rust were the only members to appear without their masks, doing so during the encore. The characters added another layer to the performance, which made sense for a group whose music is so closely connected to the colorful and virtual landscape everyone in the room was so used to.

The costumes and character identities are a big part of what makes TLT stand out. The group’s music isn’t just about creating catchy electronic tracks. It also draws on storytelling and the fictional worlds fans already love.

Since their beginning, the project has grown well beyond individual songs. The duo released its second studio album, Rust, in 2025 and has continued developing projects across music, television, and video games. What started as music shared through digital platforms has grown into a creative world that fans can follow across different forms of entertainment. Throughout the evening, the band performed two of their upcoming unreleased songs. One in collaboration with the VTuber and singer Ironmouse, on a song titled “Golden Chains”, and another from the groups own upcoming EP, a song titled “Under the Sun”. Such collaborations with other artists just goes to show the deep roots TLT has in the internet community.   

But Friday’s show made it clear that TLT’s success isn’t in the numbers, but rather the community that has formed around the music.

There’s something genuinely fun about watching an entire theater scream along to songs inspired by the wonderfully weird corners of the internet. From the outside, it might seem a little ridiculous. A room full of people dressed as characters, singing about games they played years ago does sound a bit cringey, but that’s the whole point.

Yoav summed up the feeling perfectly: “Human cringe can never be replaced by AI.”

And his words rang true throughout the theater.

We’re living in a time when AI can generate content and algorithms can recommend our next favorite song, but none of that quite compares to standing in a packed theater with hundreds of people who love the same things you do. There’s a difference between watching a video alone in your bedroom and screaming along to that same song with a crowd that knows every word, watching real people perform the works once locked in your screen, right in front of your eyes.

The internet might have helped The Living Tombstone find its audience, but a concert like this shows what happens when that audience finally gets to come together in person.

That’s what made the Wellmont feel so special. The things that might seem embarrassing to admit you enjoy in everyday life were suddenly the things everyone had in common. Being a little weird wasn’t something to hide. If anything, it was almost a part of the dress code.

That feeling carried through the show and into the encore, when The Living Tombstone returned with some of its most recognizable tracks, including “Ordinary Life,” “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” “It’s Been So Long,” and “Discord.” For fans who grew up with this music, it was a full-circle moment. Friday night wasn’t about proving you’d grown up or showing that you’d moved past the things you loved as a kid. It was about realizing that you can grow up and discover new things without abandoning the communities that made you happy in the first place.

The Living Tombstone sold out the Wellmont, but the best part of the night wasn’t just the music or the size of the crowd. It was seeing so many people show up exactly as they were, costumes and all, without worrying about whether anyone else thought they were being cringey.

Maybe that’s what makes live music so special. You can spend years enjoying something on your own, through a screen or a pair of headphones, and then suddenly find yourself surrounded by hundreds of people who love it just as much as you do.

If Friday night proved anything, it’s that growing up doesn’t have to mean growing out of everything you love. Sometimes, all you need is a favorite song, a costume, and a room full of people who are more than happy to scream along with you.

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