Kevin Bronson on November 22nd, 2016

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Put a band like the Orwells in a small room like downtown’s Resident, and you’re asking for fireworks. The sold-out crowd Sunday night got that from the Chicago rock rowdies, whose third album “Terrible Human Beings” is on the way in February. With guitarist Matt O’Keefe cheering the crowd on (“Let’s go L.A.!”), the quintet ripped through 20 songs with frontman Mario Cuomo engaging in his typical Mario Cuomo antics — making faces, getting in the crowd’s face and even joining the crowd at one point to face his bandmates while they played. Cuomo started a mosh pit all by his lonesome, pushing and shoving his way a few feet into the throng, and the audience members responding in kind.

None of that is surprising for an Orwells show; what might have surprised was that, three months from the release of the new album, the band played seven songs from it. Besides “They Put a Body in the Bayou” and “Buddy” (the two songs fans get for pre-ordering the album), the Orwells played “Creatures,” “Fry,” “Black Francis,” “Heavy Head” and “Double Feature.”

L.A.’s Dante Elephante opened the night.

Photos by Jessica Hanley

Orwells setlist: They Put a Body in the Bayou, Hallway Homicide, Let It Burn, Black Francis, In My Bed, Creatures, Cold Summer, Buddy, Broken Bones, Gotta Get Down, Blood Bubbles, Fry, Southern Comfort, Heavy Head, Creep, The Righteous One, Who Needs You, Double Feature, Encore: Mallrats, Head