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NAILS – Power Trip – Xibalba – Palm – Harm Wülf

All Photos & Text by Matthew Grant Anson

Five o’ clock on a Saturday afternoon is a middle ground. For some, depending on the previous night, it’s right in the middle of breakfast – the breakfast of aspirin. For others, it’s the critical time of day where socially acceptable excuses are invented to not leave your home, because dammit I’m in a committed relationship with Netflix. But for punks in the know, 5 o’ clock on June 8th was the time the Echo’s door’s opened for Nails and a slew of hardcore acts from all walks of the genre.

Nails was clearly the draw, but there were all types of hardcore to be had Saturday. If Nails’ Entombed-core wasn’t your thing, there was Power Trip’s thrashy crossover hardcore to tide you over. If you don’t remember or don’t want to remember the mid-to-late ‘80s, Xibalba’s tough guy hardcore will have you frantically flailing and punching the air in seconds. Rounding off the lineup was Palm, who play a style of music that sounds like a hardcore version of Pantera, a combination that could only come out of Japan, the band’s homeland. And finally, there was the crowd-confusing acoustic set of Harm Wülf, pushing the limits of hardcore – and this paragraph – beyond its breaking point.

Harm Wülf, the bedroom project of Blacklisted’s George Hirsch, served as the opening credits to a night of aggression and unresolved family issues. The crowd mostly hugged the walls while the room slowly filled up with more bodies, while the few devotees to the strumming guitar and soft vocals cautiously stood two feet back from the stage. The songs of loss and solitude were good, but far removed from the rest of the lineup. Had Harm Wülf been on a more appropriate bill, Hirsch’s work would have found the audience it does legitimately deserve.

Following Hirsch was Palm, a Japanese band whose music deserved far, far more positive reception than it received. The audience just refused to budge no matter how many times vocalist Toshihiko screamed circle pit. They should have. Palm’s recorded work smashes metal into hardcore in a way that’s tastefully tasty. And while it is said too often but is too true not to convey here, their live performance exceeded their recorded work to the point that they put in a strong bid for best live band of the evening, which is saying something considering what was to come.

What was to come was Xibalba, a band as divisive within hardcore as a whole as they are revered within their own subsection. But no matter how much of a tr00 punk you are, you’d be a liar if you said Xibalba wasn’t the heaviest damn thing you’ve ever heard. Xibalba bring absolutely crushing breakdowns to the table, each riff a bid to one-up the last one. It was nauseating heaviness, the kind that makes your stomach acid ripple like a puddle in Jurassic Park and the kind that sends those with no concept of personal space spinning around like Beyblades that punch.

But if you just couldn’t help but turn your punx nose up to Xibalba, the next band was so far removed from them that it’s a wonder how they technically occupy the same genre. Power Trip does more than just flirt with thrash metal – the two are full-blown dating and they’ve met each other’s parents – but they avoid falling into the same pit that re-thrash bands of the mid ‘00s did, and that’s because they’re not a thrash revival band. Throw away the pants and high tops and hair and you’re left with what is essentially a modern take on crossover with a 1980s appearance. The songs were quick, the mood was frantic. And nothing summed up how modern a crossover thrash band Power Trip is than the banter between songs from vocalist Riley Gale about how they were late getting to LA because they accidentally released the shit and piss valve of their van into the streets of Oakland and had to clean up their “toxic waste.” Excrement and urine? Super punk! Cleaning it up and being green? Super modern!

For the few ear drums that remained spared of a lifelong affliction with Tinnitus, that changed once Nails took the stage. Led by guitarist/singer/motivational speaker Todd Jones, Nails exploded onto the scene with their 2010 album Unsilent Death. With a thick Kurt Ballou tone, Nails spat up a new record earlier this year called Abandon All Life, a record that, save for a few tracks, pushed them even further into the realm of grindcore, OG Napalm Death enthusiasts be damned.

Nails played a set that drew from all three of the band’s releases, even throwing in “Confront Them” from Obscene Humanity for the fans that have dug deeper than the 14 minutes of Unsilent Death. Armed with an additional guitarist, the two-guitar approach to their earlier work came across as even more punishing than usual. Nails has no pity. They have no empathy. Their music lays the groundwork for that fact and their live performance builds something ugly on top of it.

Todd punctuated clusters of hardcore carnage with a slew of topics between tracks. There was the obligatory you-can-be-anything-you-want-fuck-everyone hardcore speech. There was the don’t-talk-shit-online-if-you-won’t-in-person discussion, a toast to hxc etiquette in the computer age. And finally, there was some brief exploration of the value of athletics when, while Todd stressed being yourself and not someone else’s caricature of you, someone shouted out “fuck sports!” Todd mellowly deflected, saying “I don’t know about that…they’re not for me but if someone’s into sports then whatever.” These explorations of the social and political issues of our time had found a suitable home in between songs about God’s cold hands and wide open wounds.

Nails were, of course, the final nail in the coffin of a show that was essentially a hardcore showcase. They, assisted by their openers, left a definitive stamp on the healthy state of the genre now and what should be a grim yet satisfying future to come.