Days of Rage: Day 1

The weekend of Jan 14-18 posed a special challenge to me: to see how hard I could rage at - not one - not two - but THREE punk and metal shows in one weekend. Despite gloomy weather, winter quarter thus far has been packed full of excellent shows taking place at venues with atmospheres as diverse as the gold-standard indie music dive known as The Union, the don’t-give-a-fuck charm of the Smiling Skull Saloon and the renegade, seedy, underground flare of a basement show.

Day 1 – January 14 – Abbadon, Empirian and Sonofafuckingbitch at The Smiling Skull Saloon.

The weekend kicked off a day early with a Thursday night show at the Smiling Skull. My garbage noisecore band Sonofafuckingbitch opened the night, wasting the audience’s time with offensive lyrics and the musical equivalent of hardcore punk karaoke. Our complete lack of talent served as the perfect starting point for the night.

We were followed by a long set from local metalcore band Empirian who brought a very dedicated (read: left right afterwards) crowd out to see them. Empirian are a cross between technical thrash / death metal and contemporary metalcore (stuff like The Number 12 Looks Like You), which I can’t profess to being a huge fan of. Frankly, I think metalcore was better off in the vein of Integrity and Ringworm than in the hands of bands like Job For A Cowboy, but Empirian managed to maintain some of the heaviness and grit lacking from a lot of today’s scene-y Hot Topic grindcore. They are EXTREMELY good musicians, as well.

Finally, Lancaster, Ohio grindcore band Abbadon were made de facto headliners after the intended headliner, Hope Lane Is A Dead End (remember what I was saying about scene-y metalcore?) had to cancel. Abbadon’s own style is reminiscent of Napalm Death, but with more of a black metal influence on the riffing.

Unfortunately, guitarist / rifflord Andrew Adams’ guitar amplifiers were malfunctioning for some reason, which led to a bit of a slowdown in the pacing of the night. Adams’ technical difficulties were shortly corrected, just in time for the second half of Abbadon’s half-hour long set. The band launched into possibly their most crushing song, “Plaguebringer,” to the sound of catcalling from a rather wasted college sophomore, who couldn’t understand why the music was so angry. Thankfully, the heckler’s inebriated wailing was drowned out by a merciless breakdown replete with gang vocals. This night was also notable for the fact that a stranger walked in on me in the bathroom and saw my penis as I pulled up my pants at the adjoining sports bar, the Cat’s Den.