FYI: there are no photos of Honey as the band asked me to take video of their entire set instead. So hopefully you'll see that edited into something cool in the future.
The "Too Much Rock sleights your favorite musicians by barely mentioning them instead of digging deep like they deserve" tour continues. Sorry, but I've got three other trucks full of shows sitting at the Too Much Rock dock that I need to unload.
Yeah Right opened the night just shy of 8:30 – even hardcore shows run on punk time. Five guys in the standard formation – two guitars, bass, drums, and a singer to pace the area in front of the stage, dance a little, and shout a lot. The guitars were crunchy. The rhythm section, tight. Songs were fast with few breakdowns. The quintet played nine songs in a twenty-minute set that included a cover that I didn't recognize but the audience definitely did. There were dancers engaged in appropriate levels of misbehavior. And that's really the draw. If you like hardcore then you'll come to the hardcore show where the hardcore band will play, and everything will be copacetic for a few hours.
Honey followed. Another local five-piece arranged the same way. Vocalist Jordan Kane is a powerful frontman. He's wiry and intense and when he told the audience to move, it did. More bodies spinning and flipping and kicking. All still appropriately violent. He asked for everything and got it. Only five songs in another twenty-minute set. The band was harder than I remembered. Lots of breakdowns. Lots of double bass-powered mosh parts. Lots of bass intros. Lots of backing vocals shouted from the guitarists on the wings. Lots of everything you like about modern hardcore without any of the deathcore crap that you don't.
Sacramento's Hoods headlined. The band has been around for decades, releasing scores of records on a variety of hardcore's top-echelon labels. Frontman "Mikey Hood" was an enigma. He was a shit-talker (he's still pissed at Tony Victory) who preached scene unity. During the breaks he explained how everything in the world is horrible and then told the crowd to have fun. When he wasn't patrolling the area in front of the stage, swinging his microphone, and shouting his vocals, he was downing cans of Hamm's. Every song was dedicated to punks or skins or hardcore kids or all three. Always NYHC disciples, the group's current party-first atmosphere owes more to Murphy's Law than to the beatdown style of Madball that launched the act. The quartet also showcased a newfound hardcore punk simplicity during a cover of Agnostic Front's "Friend or Foe." After a twenty-five-minute set, Mikey shut it down and invited the audience to stay and party with his band. But I split quickly – like I said, I've got three more truckloads of rock shows waiting to unload.
