I thought the front man was the sound guy. As he fiddled with cables and drum pads, he just didn’t seem like a typical hardcore frontman, decked head to toe in Tommy Hilfiger, windbreaker and jeans. He had those glasses the butt of the joke on a Disney show wore, though he made sure to take them off before the band got started. He even hit an inhaler in the middle of the show, so I wasn’t too far off. Even so, subversion works in favor of the bold, and as he shed his Tommy windbreaker for a Star Wars graphic tee, Anaiah Lei led Zulu to a dismemberment of all pretension.
Preceding Zulu was Playytime, an Atlanta based hardcore outfit. It only took 5 minutes for frontman Obi to fling himself into the crowd like a bowling ball, striking the crowd out in the process. Even for the smallest of the three bands, the crowd was riled, shoving and punching and tossing as a hardcore crowd does, though not typically on a Tuesday night.
When Zulu took the stage, The Meadows burst. Bodies flew and sweat splattered as Zulu’s noisy signature activated the feral crowd; their blends of hardcore, metalcore, powerviolence, and other extremities forced attention. Barely five minutes had passed when a microphone cable was damaged and a pause was required, and not another ten before Anaiah took a break to hit his inhaler. The crowd had no patience for exasperation, as the tight venue trembled in fear of 6’1” white boys backflipping off stage, not an ounce of regard for the overhead speakers that swung in fear or the poor bodies that stood in the way.
As Soul Glo took the stage to close, a chill nonchalance came with them. Slowly tinkering with computers and drum pads—an unusually elaborate setup for a hardcore show—anticipation steadily grew. Soul Glo approached their performance with the raucous spirit that brought them to the Coachella stage. Blazing through their culinary fusions of punk, screamo, and hip hop, Pierce Jordan commandeered the crowd with deranged iteration after deranged iteration, held steady by GG Guerra’s mystical guitar work, displaying manic techniques he didn’t even seem to understand, shredding the instrument against the speaker and letting it swing in danger once again.
Celebration was underscored; the room was filled to the brim on a weeknight in anticipation of a string of black hardcore bands, a feat all of its musicians recognized. For nearly three hours, the crowd celebrated and shared the unity, a demented jubilee after another. “Soundguy– play ‘Hard in Da Paint’ after we get off,” Anaiah Lei instructed the actual sound person. The Waka Flocka Flame track hit the speakers after the band’s last track and the stage erupted like the revolution was won, the world finally worth celebrating.
