The last time I stepped foot into the Ukie Club, it was for Hollertronix some twenty years ago, the hip-hop DJ night thrown by Low Budget and a pre-fame Diplo (he hadn’t even linked up with M.I.A. yet) where I moshed to fresh-at-the-time anthems like “Still Tippin'” and “Get Low”. It was a moment pulsing with excitement in my life – Clockcleaner’s John Sharkey even punched out some guy outside at the end of the night – yet tonight’s gig felt just as vital, even in my steadily-advancing age. A packed hall of weird youths (and a handful of ex-youths) experiencing the joy of new musical ideas will do that, even when it’s forty degrees and raining outside.

Unlike many of the shows I’ve recently attended, I was actually familiar with the recorded material of Morgan Garrett and YHWH Nailgun, and eager to see both. I also hadn’t yet seen a clear photo of either, and wasn’t sure if Morgan Garrett was the tall redhead in the satin jacket / cropped Juicy Couture hoodie combo, adorned with multiple silver rings (and grill to match) until the music, or glorious absence of music, kicked in. Supported by Jackie McDermott (of Urochromes) on drums and a bald-headed, sleeveless-shirted guitarist named Zach Darrup, Garrett’s set kicked in with startling intensity, the whole room suddenly caught off-guard. Performing over a loud, direct-input backing track, Garrett pantomimed his own voice, screamed silently, gesticulated madly and shuddered as if his pinky ring touched an ungrounded circuit. Wearing his black sunglasses at an unbelievably downward angle, Darrup grimaced madly as he played his electric guitar, the visual strumming rarely corroborating what my ears were hearing. McDermott slammed through Dale Crover-esque fills and beats amidst Garrett’s anti-riffs, resulting in the sound of sludge-metal dropped in one of those landfill trash compactors that gets millions of YouTube views, or a nu-metal as gaseous whale corpse exploding on the shore. The intensity never relented, nor did the ingenuity of the performance, nor did the songs themselves, gleefully dramatic, neurotic and ready to strike. After a few minutes, my show-going buddy commented, “I don’t think he actually sang a single word” – I’m fairly certain Morgan Garrett did, though whether or not that was what I had heard would remain gloriously unclear. It struck me that Garrett and Darrup’s performance conjured a wild, unprecedented weirdness/greatness the likes of which I can only compare to Tom Smith and Rat Bastard in To Live And Shave In LA, whose first No Fun Fest performance shattered the dimensional limits by which I thought music had to abide. I’m going to go crazy if I can’t see Morgan Garrett live again, and soon.

babybaby_explores came next, and I’m honoring their net-speak stylization as I’m still riding high from Morgan Garrett’s stellar performance. This trio comes from Providence, long-running hotbed for weirdo hand-stitched experimental music, and they served that pantheon well. I love when people play drum machines by beating out the pattern in real time with their fingers on its pads (Providence noise-pop weirdos Football Rabbit did exactly that some twenty years ago); babybaby_explores member Ramona Cano-Daly is on her way to an early Carpal Tunnel diagnosis with her rapid-fire, on-the-spot beat-making. Sam M-H played guitar over these beats, ringing-out seasick chords that sounded like cute burps with a little vomit in the back of the throat, and vocalist Lids Bday hopped in place, shouting and squeaking into a mic riddled with the same thick reverb gravy as Extreme Animals (another notable Providence-based “rainbow rock” act from years ago). They had some technical difficulties, which is to be expected when you have that many small electronic boxes linked by easily-malfunctioning cords on a DIY budget, but the crowd didn’t seem to care when they stopped a song halfway through and restarted it, and neither did I. A youngster in a tucked-in “Public Castration Is A Good Idea” Swans tee was going absolutely buck wild a few feet in front of me, next to a couple who danced so furiously in schooled, modern techniques that they’d keep it going a few seconds after a song ended. The crowd was shedding their clothes, but babybaby_explores kept their many layers on, hoodies over capes with a sideways t-shirt improbably tucked in. M-H wore thickly knit, fingerless orange gloves, a bold move for any guitarist in need of their fingers, but this entire show was defined by its bold moves.

The crowd was thick (three hundred people, maybe more?) from the drop, but everyone packed their way up front for the fresh stars YHWH Nailgun (which I learned is pronounced “Yahweh Nailgun”, not with the initials spoken as I was previously doing all boomer-like). Apparently hailing from Philadelphia at some point, but now Brooklyn-based, I had quickly fallen in love with their debut AD 93 twelve-inch, and was excited to see how it worked in person. On stage, the band looked like identical triplets with a bald-beard-glasses guy – you would’ve needed a dozen extra clicks or less to create all four of them in Fallout 4‘s character creation mode. Gangly with home-cut brown hair and the indescript clothes of professional art movers, they sufficiently milled about on stage before Sam Pickard ripped into one of his band-defining rototom rhythms. The music would be dazzling in any circumstance, but vocalist Zack Borzone (second wild n’ weird Zack/h of the night!) pushed the performance into a higher energy field. Looking like Cillian Murphy playing one of The Strokes, Borzone’s sore-throat vocals and high cheekbones pushed an emotional madness to the front of the stage just as often as he popped off to emphasize the rhythms, parts Charles Lavenac of Golden Teacher (the swagger), David Yow (the forehead and throat veins) and Waste Man’s Jack Long (the hoarseness). The crowd was in full throttle, one of those unmitigated nerd-pits full of involuntary thrashing the likes of which I recognized from Lightning Bolt’s national touring post-Ride The Skies. Pickard’s drumming was relentless – Lance Armstrong performance-enhanced by Obolon Premium (the Ukie Club beer of choice) – and the rest of the band, through their purposefully-limited sound palette, absolutely dazzled. An exhilarating moment for all in attendance, I sweated through my Acronym J91-WS from simply buzzing in place, thrilled by the uniquely physical music of YHWH Nailgun and Morgan Garrett. As I exited back up the club’s stairs into the freezing early spring weather and feeling so inspired by what I had witnessed, I could tell others felt the same – if you didn’t already have a band going into this gig, you were desperate to start one on your way out.

Is there a better unintentionally-appropriate name for a hardcore venue than “Bonk’s”? This “crabhouse and bar” is located on the corner between nothing and jack-shit in a well-littered commercial area just off I-95. The closest business is an auto-body shop that blares a looped female-voice recording when you hit the motion sensor: “this area is monitored by video”. The Bonk’s folks rent out the back enclosed patio area for private parties, a deal of which intrepid hardcore youths have taken advantage for all-ages hardcore and punk shows that probably cap out at around a hundred or so. On a Monday night immediately following a weekend-long hardcore fest in the same city (Breakdown, Underdog and Killing Time headlined), some kids remained insatiable, and I was glad to be among them.

The scene was lively and congenial upon arrival, and I would like to confirm that I had a crew of my own: three lifelong buddies / bandmates / ex-bandmates. If we were ten years younger, we still would’ve been the oldest guys in the room. I know how we got there – we drove – but the why we went remains a bit of a mystery, as none of these bands were a must-see for any of us. I think the most straight-edge guy in my crew (all three are edge but he’s the most by far) really wanted to see Life Force, as he had custom-ordered a straight-edge varsity jacket made by the singer. Before we knew it, we were eating delicious deep-fried vegan food at the weed-themed (but confusingly, not weed-infused) restaurant Blazerz Food Joint before heading over.

First up was Skives, whose name rhymes with “knives” and isn’t a misspelled old-timey term for underwear. Clad in all black except for the drummer (drummers are always the last to get the fashion memo), they rolled through their set of lengthy metallic hardcore-crust songs. Each song was stuffed with parts, from solemn intros to ugly half-time beat-downs to epic crust gallops… any sort of typical blackened metal/core influence was grist for their mill. Why they needed to stuff all of these parts into five-minute long epics instead of breaking them down into smaller songs, I do not know, but I appreciate that they came with their own perspective. Vocalist JL had a raspy sneer that reminded me of Stephanie McMahon when she would scream, and they kind of look similar to each other, too. I was pleased to learn that Skives are from the Lehigh Valley, which is also where I tend to claim as being from. I will keep an eye out for them the next time I visit my parents.

Up next we have God Instinct, repping Philadelphia hardcore, the first of the three bands bearing the New Age Records banner (yep, the very same New Age Records from the mid ’90s). While Skives received some modest, obligatory hardcore dancing, the room erupted for these local faves. The X’ed-up sound guy repeatedly ran into the pit, leaving his post to dance hard, and then would scamper back to the mixing board to play God Instinct’s interstitial atmospheric soundscapes. That’s called hardcore dedication! The singer wore a sick, beat-to-hell Words To Live By Words To Die For hoodie, which beat out the door-guy’s Shady Maple Smorgasbord hoodie by a hair as best of the evening. God Instinct’s hardcore was energetic and moshy, but not in an overtly tough-guy way; I had heard murmurings that today’s hardcore youth are getting sick of the chugga-chug crowd-kill vibe, and are leaning in a faster, more posi, more “old school” direction, which I certainly appreciate. Even so, the dancing was mostly a mix of sideways crowd-slamming and silly arm-flailing “karate” moves, but I have reluctantly accepted such foolishness as the typical modern standard, especially as the vibes here were communal and friendly. I had not (and still haven’t) heard studio recordings from any of the bands who played, but my one friend confirmed that God Instinct are a touch more melodic on recordings (he mentioned both Tragedy and Good Riddance as touch-points, interestingly enough). I’m glad their sound was scuffed up by the raw in-room sound and modest PA capabilities, and that the singer’s few attempts at “singing” were drowned out by the live noise. Someone ordered fries from the bar during this set, and the delicious smell quickly filled the room and lingered there the rest of the evening. Alongside God Instinct’s animated performance, it was impossible to not be appetised one way or another.

Moral Law followed, hailing all the way from Denver and again part of New Age’s present-day crop. They were proudly “militant vegan straight-edge”, and while I am none of those three things, I found no aspect of their performance off-putting (though I still can’t tell if the show-goer in the “marijuana kills” t-shirt was wearing it seriously or ironically… thumbs up either way). They could’ve bantered a bit more, considering their militant stance and all, but the fully torso-tatted singer was content to leave brief intros like “this is a vegan song” at that. Moral Law were the most metallic outfit of the night, akin to late ’90s Earth Crisis or late ’90s Cave In with Left For Dead’s crude guitar tone, though unlike those two metal-core icons, this drummer occasionally struggled to keep up (as did, let’s be honest, literally every drummer of the evening). I’m used to this sort of music operating with a pro-gear / pro-tude presentation, so the scrappiness on display here, with pedal configurations that weren’t labored over and the occasional flub here or there, was appealing and relatable. A far superior metallic hardcore experience to the outlandish polish of August Burns Red, who I saw last year at a festival outside of Copenhagen, performing with zero amps on stage and an engineer controlling the direct-input mix via an iPad. I wasn’t even sure if Moral Law’s bassist knew how to tune it, which was how hardcore should be. And speaking of bassists, I spied the Disclose-shirt-wearing bassist of God Instinct devouring a big, chewy chocolate-chip cookie on the edge of the pit during Moral Law’s set. I can only assume it was vegan, so on second thought, maybe it wasn’t that good.

Finishing off the gig around ten PM, Texas’s Life Force (AKA Life Force (9) on Discogs) quickly set up on much of the same shared gear as the other three groups. The singer of God Instinct played bass and the singer of Moral War played guitar, a compacted scab lineup to help enable Moral Law and Life Force tour Europe together in April. Maybe Animal Collective should share members with Life Force for an easier European touring experience? Vocalist Flint Beard (best cis-masc name I’ve heard in a while) commanded the proceedings, a vocalist sure, but an excellent public speaker first and foremost. I think the last thing anyone really wants is to be preached at by yet another self-assured white guy, especially in this day and age, but I found his presence and words to be heartfelt and thoughtful, aware of his privilege and passionate yet appropriately humble. The band gave him plenty of space between songs to rant against injustice, imperialism, transphobia, genocide, and other glaring American inequalities in a way that, while not revelatory, felt good to hear coming from someone at a hardcore show filled with a small-yet-diverse crowd suffering from similar and different forms of oppression. I saw Infest play with four other hardcore bands a few days after Trump was elected the first time, and was a little stunned that none of the bands (not even DC’s Pure Disgust!) had a single thing to say about it on stage. Life Force’s music was typical speedy, youth-crew posi-core, complete with one of the sloppiest renditions of “True Til Death” I’ve ever witnessed (which was also surprisingly the only cover of the entire evening). Beard confidently brought us all in with him, and didn’t even seem to mind that his bandmates could barely play their instruments. May they thrive in Europe and be allowed safe passage back to this godforsaken country.

Before leaving the gig, my crew stopped by the merch table (set up outside the venue as there was simply no room for a folding table inside) and each one of us bought the same item: a New Age Records t-shirt based on one of Unity’s classic designs, inexplicably sold by Life Force for five bucks a pop. I tried to get us all to put them on and pose for a pic together in front of the big New Age Records banner, but my friends refused to match my level of shamelessness. Sure, this was some comicon-level behavior I was pushing for, but the fun, goofy, hardcore friendship solidarity was intensely pumping through my veins, alright?