After a winter-long show drought I started making up for lost time by going to my second show in as many days last week. This time it was for the classic hardcore band MDC. I saw them play here a few years ago and thought they were still quite good so I was looking forward to seeing them again especially because they were playing at one of my favorite clubs, Reggie’s.
Embrace the Kill
Embrace the Kill
Due to a mix up on my part, I got a late start and when I got inside the club the second band, Embrace the Kill, were part way through their set. They played some really fast thrash with metallic guitars. Their tempo remained constant as the singers would growl and yell their vocals. Their songs were pretty short and to the point and they pelted out one after the other in pretty rapid succession. The crowd was still pretty thin at this point but I saw a few heads bobbing in approval.
Mouth Sewn Shut
Mouth Sewn Shut
Mouth Sewn Shut
Mouth Sewn Shut
Mouth Sewn Shut quickly followed and the size of the crowd also grew quite a bit at this point. I had heard of them before but never heard their music until they started playing. They were a bit similar to Embrace the Kill but with far less metal in the guitar sounds. They were much more straight forward hardcore punk but they also threw in more tempo changes and “mosh parts”. Speaking of mosh parts the kids in the crowd went pretty nuts for many of their songs, and would also do so on command by the frequent pleas from the singer.
MDC
MDC
MDC
MDC closed the show after a fairly lenghty setup process. There was a big banner behind them with some classic early artwork on it that looked pretty cool. The minute they got into their first song the now even larger crowd started going crazy. I got knocked around a couple of times which made shooting photos rather difficult. I quickly moved over to one side to get out of the line of fire and resumed capturing their performance.
MDC
MDC
MDC
They played a lot of songs from the first album, each one resulting in the kids going nuts. They peppered in some brand new material too which sounded a lot like the early material. Over the past couple of decades their sound has remained very consistent which is a good thing. In between songs on occasion, Dave would talk to the crowd or at the very least announce what their next song was. A couple of times he even asked the crowd what they wanted to hear. When they finally got to “John Wayne Was a Nazi”, the kids went berserk! They left the stage for a few minutes to catch their breath and came back and played a couple more songs for an encore.
MDC
MDC
Overall this was a pretty fun hardcore show that had newer bands and one classic one sharing a stage so there was a little something for everyone. Another muscial evening well spent!
