Rev Theory got its start in North Andover, Massachusetts, where singer Rich Luzzi, guitarist Julien Jorgensen, and drummer Dave Agoglia began in North Andover, MA, where singer Rich Luzzi, guitarist Julien Jorgensen and drummer Dave Agoglia all attended Merrimack College. Originally performing as Revelation Theory, the band moved to Long Island, New York in 2001 with hopes of hitting the big time , and in 2002, bassist Matty, a student at New York University, completed the quartet. The group built its early following the hard way, playing club dates and slowly earning attention on the East Coast rock circuit with a raw, riff driven hard rock sound.
The band's breakthrough came after a six-song demo that was released as an EP in 2004 started garnering Rev Theory attention and helped them win a deal with the EMI distributed Element Records. Their debut, 2005 debut album, Truth Is Currency, was produced by Grammy winner Paul Ebersold, known for his work with 3 Doors Down and Saliva , and its lead single "Slowburn" helped the band land tour slots. By 2007 the band, now streamlined to Rev Theory, had signed with Interscope Records and brought in guitarist Rikki Lixx, and in 2008 they released their true commercial peak, Light It Up. It was their first album under the Interscope Records label, and was released on June 10, 2008, to sales of 10,200 copies, reaching number 74 on the Billboard 200 and had sold 132,000 copies by 2012. The album's success was amplified by professional wrestling exposure, as the song was featured as one of the two theme songs for the 2008 WWE pay-per-view event WrestleMania XXIV , while "Hell Yeah" became the theme song for the TV show Blue Mountain State. Riding that wave of visibility, Rev Theory became a fixture on the rock touring circuit through the late 2000s. In January 2009, Rev Theory began touring with Theory of a Deadman and Ten Second Epic, and in May toured with Buckcherry, Avenged Sevenfold, and Papa Roach. Rev Theory then toured as part of Crüe Fest 2 before touring throughout the fall of 2009 with such bands as Seether and Breaking Benjamin. That October, Rev Theory began touring with Lynyrd Skynyrd. The band released a third album, Justice, on Interscope in 2011, but soon underwent a significant lineup shift when just before the release of their EP Take 'Em Out in 2012, Lixx parted ways with the band and his space was filled by Paul Phillips of Puddle of Mudd. After a lengthy gap, the band returned in 2016 with their fourth studio album, The Revelation, released on September 9, 2016 through Another Century Records , which included the single "We Own the Night," later chosen as a WWE theme.
Rev Theory has remained active in the years since, continuing to release new music and maintaining a devoted following built on its long association with WWE storylines and arena rock touring. The band's catalog, from the scrappy early days as Revelation Theory through the Interscope-era success of Light It Up and Justice, has left a mark on 2000s hard rock and post-grunge, and songs like "Hell Yeah" and "Voices" continue to circulate through wrestling broadcasts and rock radio, keeping the band's name alive well past its commercial peak.
It was during that peak touring period, in the Light It Up era of 2008 and 2009, that Wayne Dennon caught Rev Theory live twice with his camera, capturing the band at the height of its arena rock momentum. Those two shows yielded 79 photographs now preserved in this archive, a small but vivid record of a band riding its biggest commercial wave, and over the years visitors have returned to view these images of Rev Theory more than 60,000 times, a testament to the lasting pull of Wayne's concert photography and the era of hard rock it so faithfully documented.
