Haste The Day, Mychildren Mybride, The Chariot, and A Plea For Purging
Monday, March 7 at The Canal Club
I’m an old man now, and all-ages shows trip me up. As it’s become more and more common for me to head out to shows that don’t start until 10 PM, earlier start times become harder and harder to make. I thought I was doing a good job by showing up for this show at 7 PM, but when I walked into the Canal Club a few minutes after 7, A Plea For Purging was already playing. I felt pretty good about having at least made it in time for the first band… until later, when I learned that there had been a local opening act who started their set at 6:15. 6:15? That’s crazy! Well, sorry, opening band–not only did I miss you, no one I talked to at the show even knew what your name was. If it’s any consolation, they all said you were pretty good. That’s something, right?
Haste The Day, Mychildren Mybride, The Chariot, and A Plea For Purging
Monday, March 7 at The Canal Club
I’m an old man now, and all-ages shows trip me up. As it’s become more and more common for me to head out to shows that don’t start until 10 PM, earlier start times become harder and harder to make. I thought I was doing a good job by showing up for this show at 7 PM, but when I walked into the Canal Club a few minutes after 7, A Plea For Purging was already playing. I felt pretty good about having at least made it in time for the first band… until later, when I learned that there had been a local opening act who started their set at 6:15. 6:15? That’s crazy! Well, sorry, opening band–not only did I miss you, no one I talked to at the show even knew what your name was. If it’s any consolation, they all said you were pretty good. That’s something, right?
Anyway, back to the parts of the show I actually saw. A Plea For Purging were not bad as deathcore bands go–their breakdowns were heavy, but also pretty creative, which is the challenging part of writing deathcore songs. What was more problematic was the lack of much of anything else in their music. Tempos remained the same throughout most of the songs, a uniformly slow plod taking some of the punch out of the breakdowns by giving them very little to break down from. Of course, we’ve all seen the breakdown-obsessed bands who write only the most perfunctory of fast and midtempo parts, always just looking for a way to break up the breakdowns. That sucks too, don’t get me wrong. But while one A Plea For Purging song might seem pretty heavy, half a dozen or so is enough to get really monotonous. I saw most of their set, but I zoned out on the music quickly enough to only remember a song or two. The brightest spot was the singer’s between-song banter. The guy was really funny and had a good attitude; I’ll bet he and his band are fun people to hang out with. It’s too bad their music wasn’t any better.
Next up was the band I’d come to see–The Chariot. They hit the stage at 7:45, making me very glad I’d managed to show up earlier than usual. The Chariot are notorious for insane live performances, and therefore I was pretty stoked to see some chaos. While they didn’t end their set by stacking their speaker cabinets in a pile in the middle of the stage or anything, I was not let down, as they went nuts starting with the very first song in the set. Bassist Jon “Wolf” Kindler was probably the most unhinged performer of the band, quickly demonstrating a habit of taking his bass off and throwing it to the ground. Sometimes he did this in order to stagedive, while at other times he simply dragged his bass around the stage for a few moments, like a child with a favorite toy, before putting it back on and continuing the song. During the song “They Drew Their Swords,” after Wolf had slung his bass down and stagedove into the crowd, singer Josh Scogin picked up the bass and began playing a bass line that sounded for all the world like that of “Seven Nation Army” by the White Stripes. Drummer David Kennedy joined in with him on the beat as the guitarists kept feeding back, but the song didn’t really come back together until Wolf found his way back to the stage, at which time Josh tossed him his bass and the band started playing in unison again.
The Chariot’s music is constructed in a way that allows for these sorts of chaotic, feedback-laced intervals, but make no mistake–when they’re playing the parts of the songs that demand tight, well-played performance, they are more than equal to the task. I had worried that their hectic stage show would cause the music itself to suffer, but it was not to be. Even though almost everyone in the band did something completely ridiculous at least once (here I am compelled to mention the point, halfway through the set, when David ended a song by leaping over his drumset and crumpled into a heap in the middle of the stage, only to pick himself up, climb back behind his kit, and go right into the next song like nothing had happened), the songs sounded great throughout. The Chariot struck a perfect balance between well-constructed music and onstage chaos, achieving the best of both worlds and making their performance the evening’s highlight.
I wasn’t sure why Mychildren Mybride, a band I hadn’t previously heard of, played after The Chariot, but the kids around me seemed excited for them, so I was open-minded as they took the stage. As soon as they started playing, though, I became suspicious. “Wait a minute,” I thought. “Entire band dressed in black… guitarists in very wide stance… is that a programmed drum loop? OH MY GOD, I’M WATCHING A CRABCORE BAND.” In fairness to Mychildren Mybride, they came nowhere near the ridiculousness of dubious crabcore pioneers Attack Attack–no autotuned clean vocals, no full-on techno breakdowns, and they really only used programmed parts as placeholders between songs. But they sure did look the part, going into full-on crab stance every time they’d drop into one of their many breakdowns.
And said breakdowns, unlike those of A Plea For Purging earlier in the evening, were actually pretty bad. What Mychildren Mybride really liked to do was build up to a change, pause for a second, then slam into the lowest in-key note on their guitars. Their breakdowns pretty much consisted of the guitarists chugging on that note over and over while the drummer played a really slow beat. I thought it was pretty indicative of the overall effect of these breakdowns that the crowd around me, rather than moshing or whatever, would jump up and down during these parts. I guess that’s what pushed Mychildren Mybride over the line in my mind from deathcore into full-on crabcore. Their breakdowns inspired moves you’re more likely to see at a techno club than a hardcore show. About halfway through their set, Mychildren Mybride’s singer announced that they were about to play a couple of old songs, and the band proceeded to play my favorite songs of their set thus far. I’m speaking relatively, though–rather than having the sludgy drag of deathcore, these songs harked back to the melodic riffing of Swedish-influenced metalcore, which was all the rage about five years ago. My guess is that Mychildren Mybride decided, inbetween their previous and current albums, that they needed to “get way heavier,” and ended up with the deathcore/crabcore sound they’re playing now. The predominantly teenaged audience at the show went nuts for it, but I was left cold.
Haste The Day, like all of the bands on this bill, are a Christian band. I could write a lot about the Christian dominance of the modern emo and metalcore genres, but I’m not sure how appropriate it would be in this context. However, one thing that we should definitely talk about is the fact that the style of music Haste The Day plays is almost entirely a Christian innovation. Building on the integration of more emotional-sounding riffs into heavier music, an innovation which was pioneered by Shai Hulud, bands like Underoath and Hopesfall created an entire style that straddled the line between emo and metalcore. They added the intense melodrama and clean vocal melodies of emo to a still largely heavy sound based in the hardcore song structures and metallic accents of metalcore. The pinnacle of this style, in my humble opinion, is Underoath’s 2006 album Define The Great Line, but Haste The Day do a pretty great job of it themselves, and therefore I was looking forward to their set washing the taste of crabcore out of my brain.
They did the job admirably, playing their upbeat metalcore tunes extremely well. This show was part of Haste The Day’s farewell tour, and therefore there was somewhat of a valedictory feeling about the set. All sorts of guests came out to sing with the band over the course of their set, including members of Conditions and Oh Sleeper. There was a lot of energy in the performance, and the fact that their music focused on uptempo riffing rather than breakdowns, and often on melody rather than uniform crushing heaviness, made them a breath of fresh air after all of the monotone breakdowns I’d been subjected to during the rest of the evening. It did bug me a little bit when Haste The Day’s frontman took a minute or so to preach to us between songs about the love that’s waiting for us, etc. etc., but it wasn’t enough to ruin the set for me or anything. I can see why it’s hard for some of my non-Christian friends to remain open-minded towards Christian bands, though–nobody likes to be preached to. The tough questions surrounding things like religion are things most people prefer to figure out on their own (or leave unanswered, as the case may be). But in the case of Haste The Day–and The Chariot, and Underoath, and quite a few other bands–I find the quality of the music to be worth enduring an occasional reference to a belief system I do not share. And on a general note, I found the crowd to be friendlier and the dancing less violent at this show than it has been at recent non-Christian shows based around similar music. Maybe that’s just a coincidence, though.
Not everything about this show was ideal for me. Clearly, there are a lot of things about the bands the kids today are into that I just don’t get. However, the bands I was there to see played excellently and gave us quite a show, so in the end, the evening was well spent. I was surprised when I was out of the venue by 10:30, and even briefly contemplated heading to the late show at Strange Matter, before remembering that I’m old and tired and don’t have that kind of stamina anymore. Instead, I headed home in time to catch the 11 o’clock news (or, well, actually The Daily Show), just like my parents used to do when I was a teenager.
Words by Andrew Necci
Images by Jenn Harrington
