Beasts of No Nation - LTW - The Mostly Dead -- Red Palace - Oct 26 2011

The Mostly Dead - Regular readers will know that this is one of my favorite area hardcore punk acts, so unless they really slip up, they will be getting praise in this column. No slip-ups tonight, as their music was tight and strong and they did a great job building their 26 minute set by playing their most boundary stretching songs toward the end, which was a good touch. It was interesting to see their long time bass player back in the fold, although he has to trek down from Brooklyn to play with the band these days. The one 'game' I tried to play with myself is imagining the best era and city each of these bands would be a part of in punk/hardcore history. I came up with early 80s Boston with nods to the Freeze and even a little Proletariat of Mission of Burma tossed in. The only negative was that the crowd was slow in getting into the club and ended up about 20 or so. But they seemed to dig it as did I.

LTW - This is a local four-piece hardcore thrash band with a similar vocals, guitar, bass, drums line-up. The guitarist looks like he's 14, the drummer 41 (not really, just the shaved head and dark rimmed glasses look). There is a really bad feedback buzzing coming from their massive amps, but it is completely unimportant when they play as they just blast through the typical thrash songs. My placement of these guys is latter day Boston. Siege anyone? I barely remember that band, but they came to mind. These guys could also be post-Negative Approach (although they were in my mind as NA was the between band house music). The crowd had doubled by now, but if they blinked they may have missed this 13 minute set. I don't see an obvious web link and I will avoid the temptation to send you the LTW Band that stand for Light the World (ed.-corrected per comment)

Beasts of No Nation - I saw this solid local band about a year ago opening for the Zeros at the Velvet Lounge. I recall enjoying them, but the set went by pretty quickly. Even though it was only 25 minutes tonight, that was plenty of time for this four-piece to showcase their excellent assertive songs. It's hardcore and punk and heavy and tuneful. They loosen things up a bit at times and the guitars play together nicely as opposed to just pummeling each other to new heights. Hard to fit these guys in to any place and time, but I heard elements of the Offenders from Texas, but their was a sense of melodic hardcore punk from 80s LA in there, too. The main thing was that these guys deliver high quality songs that you can choose to think about or just rock out to. Hopefully, you'll keep your brain on as you will be rewarded more. Intriguing crowd tonight in that they were kind of mature and reserved for such a heavy show (thankfully they were not as 'mature' as I am in regards to this euphemism). I hope I don't wait as long for the next show as I do feed of these short bursts of energy. And these guys do it as well as anybody.

Quote of the Night: From LTW between songs... "Don't clap." Really? - then don't pause. Is your next song going to be about No Rules? But seriously, he makes a good point. This band like others in even radically different genres are presenting an overall sound and approach in a short set. It's not about playing a series of songs with their individual hooks, so I agree with him in spirit.