Christian Crowd more Annoying that non-Christian Crowd...Who Knew?
So I went and saw Norma Jean, Underoath, Beloved, Dead Poetic, and Haste the Day tonight at the ICC Church in Allston. While the show was not as good as the ETID/AILD show, it was entertaining nonetheless. Here's a brief recap:
Haste the Day: Way better than I expected. I heard their stuff online and the guys scream really bothered me, like a mix between a really annoying terrier and a fourteen year old girl. Tonight, despite the annoying scream, the music was intense and really impressed me. The drummer had wicked fast feet and the band put on a good show overall. They're very harcore though and were big into the mosh terminology. Either way, they were the surprise of the evening.
Dead Poetic: Boring. The lead singer was a wuss and had a crappy voice. The rest of the band was ok, but they weren't very tight. I wasn't impressed at all.
Beloved: Class act. First of all, they have three guitarists, each playing a different part, and they contrast the melodic/singing parts so well with the thrash/screaming breakdowns. Their live show was extremely tight and the drummer was nothing short of amazing. Not only was he non-stop energy, he did triplet 32nd notes from double bass to toms with one hand while screaming at the same time. Any drummers know it's hard enough expending all the energy you do drumming and having to sing on top of that, imagine screaming. He looked tired. Awesome though. Definetely better than expected, even though I expected a lot.
Underoath: These guys were good. They were pretty tight, the guitarist was a nut and that was aweome. I had a little trouble because the drummer wasn't as on as I would have expected. Kind of a weak hitter too. I couldn't tell if he was a girl or not at first, but turned out to be a guy. Wierd. The singer was really cool too and I liked what the guitarist had to say as a confession of the band's faith and his gratitude to the church for opening up their doors to the insanity that is a hardcore show. The synth was loud though, and being next to the speaker, it was overbearing at times and drowned out the guitars. They also had mic problems so some of the double vocal stuff didn't come out really. I had trouble taking the keyboardist seriously because he looked just like Chris Farley and was a goon. Overall they were ok, I probably would have enjoyed them more had I known their music more fluently.
Norma Jean: Awesome. So much energy, pretty tight and just awesome intenisty in insane music. I enjoyed them immensely. They had some cool video stuff going on in between some songs, most of which was very trippy, and as Jake put it "Ring-esque." He feared we were all going to die. We didn't. They played a good amount of their CD Bless the Martyr Kiss the Child, as well as an old song and a new song. The video was cool in their closing song because it showed clips of Christ being crucified and it worked really well with the chaos of the last song. It ended with the Bassist laying on the floor kind of writhing with his bass. They also had this cool instrumental song that had this insane bassy explosion on a pad that the singer controlled and it was really cool, but as he did it more and more in the song, the speakers started blowing because it was overdriving and we started to smell the electrical burning smell that you get when electricity is starting a fire. It stopped though. That was good. Overall, they took the cake.
Now about the crowd, I was annoyed. I grew up going to mainly Christian shows where the tough guy mentality was surprisingly worse because nobody just up and beat the crap out of each other, they just got all mad and "Moshed" harder. This was like a trip back into the seventh grade again. At least at the ETID show people had blood to show they were in the pit. Here, kids were just sweaty and nasty and obnoxious. The kids who kept stage diving were trying to push through the crowd to get to the front instead of just jumping onto the top of people and that got annoying, not to mention these three guys thought it was funny to jump on the same group of like four girls standing next to me who weren't even near the pit. Eventually three guys dropped a kid and started kicking him. I laughed. Later on, some kid jumped on my head (when I was again nowhere near the pit) and kicked one of my earrings out, which I lost and had to wait around and find after the show. That made me mad. He was dumb. The thing that really irked me though was this kid who seems so typical of the Christian youth today, and I'm sure I was this same way before I got cynical. He was hitting on a girl standing in front of me and to do this at a hardcore show, what better way to do it than to talk about hardcore. So this guy starts in about Zao, and how he liked their first album because it was so heavy and awesome, but he didn't like their second album because "they just didn't seem Christian." Granted Zao has done some sketchy things at times and renounced their "Christian Band" label, something I'm not necessarily fond of, but for someone to not like them because they were not Christian enough bothered me. Now, on top of this annoyance, I watched his eyes during this conversation as they repeatedly drifted southward to her chest. My thoughts: If you're going to be a hypocrite, do it subtely like the rest of us. I guess maybe I came the realization that were are all pretty bad representations of Christianity. Myself perhaps worse than many. I would just rather be at a non-Christian event and have everybody go all out (i.e. kid in ETID pit hanging from the I beam in the ceiling kicking at kids) or not go at all. Don't play games. It seems non-Christian kids are just more honest. Bravo to the bands, however, for being so honest about their faith and their motivations in Christ. Rock on.
Check out these pics on www.returntothepit.com under ICC church Norma Jean show, there should be good ones, and help out the guy who takes the pics, he does it for free and on his own time, so if you get a chance at a show, thank him, be nice, and may help him out financially. He's a good guy.
End.
"What we're doing is so wrong...But what you're wearing is so right, it's so tight..."
-I Been Gone a Long Time by Every Time I Die (disclaimer, I don't think this lyric is a "good" one, but I think it's hilarious the way he screams it, so if you're offended...TOO BAD!)