The blog was in a hiatus for few years. I just got busy with my money projects, not to sound as an excuse, but a Saturday full of punk and hardcore made me realize how much I miss taking pictures and covering shows so here is a little write up of this beautiful Saturday!
I started the day heading to Tompkins Square Park – the local punk scene was mourning the death of Sharpie – a punk kid, gone too young and after the funeral service there was a show organize by Mike SOS – all ages, all free, outdoors and great! The show was opened by two female fronted bands – Red Out and my favorites Necrotic Society!!! While Red Out played mostly covers, Necrotic delivered their crusty heavy hitting and politically charged hardcore and all author songs to their already established loyal audience!
Courtney on vocals, Alex on guitar, Javier on bass and JR on drums started playing together in 2016 and already have few compilations and splits released to a critical acclaim.
They’re soon putting out their first full-length so definitely keep your eyes and ears open for this badass band.
Local hardcore punks The Errorists played next a fresh NYHC set with catchy songs. They’re a pretty new band and just released their first EP “Flat Broke” this year.
The show kept going until later with Invading Species, Valence, The Cameramen, Blueblack but I had to head to my second show for the day – the long awaited (year and a half!) and postponed due to the pandemic 25th anniversary of H2O!
The show opened Slashers, which I pretty much missed, due to timing, but I got to hear Be Well – the emotional HC project of Brian McTernan from Battery.
This supergroup was formed by members of various bands including Bane, Only Crime, Darkest Hour, Fairweather, Ashes, Olympia, Beasts of No Nation, and Converge and the set was catchy and melodic.
It started getting crowded for Farenheit 451 – old school Bronx NYHC band, currently disbanded, but back together for the show.
Fahrenheit 451 were one of the most innovative NYHC bands to ever do it mixing in elements from their five members’ diverse musical tastes. Hardcore punk, metal, hip-hop and more were molded together into a very “different type of hardcore”. The band’s run started in 1995 and ended in 2000. Since then they have done a few reunion shows, released a discography of all of their recorded material and gotten all of that old material up on the big streaming services. Check them out!
Next on the bill were my personal favorites for the night – legendary SHUTDOWN!
In December, 1994 Shutdown emerged on the scene as one of few bands ready to take their music and message to the next level.
With an emphasis on old-school values and new school musical sensibility, Shutdown were poised to take over where bands like Warzone, Cro-Mags and Gorilla Biscuits left off. They have played some of the biggest shows in past hardcore history, including one of the two tributes to Raybeez (Warzone) at CBGB’s in the fall of 1997. Raybeez himself actually went as far as to state that Shutdown is “the future of hardcore”.
Their set was really high energy and as hard as NYHC gets, which is “real hard” and they pleased their fans with music from their 2 full-length albums “Against All Odds” and “Few and Far Between”.
Around 8:30 PM EST it was time for the headliners – H20!!! Formed in 1994 on the LES by Sick Of It All roadie Toby Morse, Rusty Pistachio and Eric Rice, H20 quickly became a staple in the hardcore punk scene with their unique playful sound! It was super cool that Toby had his son on drums (Hardcore legacy lives on)!
They played all fan favorites like “Roots”, “Memory Lane” (in acoustic freestyle version), “5 yr plan” and “What happened?” and left the audience happy and satisfied.
It was awesome to see the old HC faces (Vinny Stigma, John Watson) mosh along with the new kids. And it was definitely worth the wait. NYHC forever!
