Bored Straight
Concert lineups, like everything else in life, are subject to change, but smaller shows at neighborhood hole-in-the-wall clubs like Quarters have a flexibility and a community about them that makes occasional mix-ups much easier to handle. Take Saturday night: buzzed about newcomers Heartthob cancelled and Technicolor Teeth, fresh from the release of a solid new 7-inch and about to head out on a two and a half week tour, ran into car trouble that ultimately prevented them from playing. Missing out on those two bands was a bummer but, thanks to some quick thinking, it didn’t derail the rest of the evening.
Local hardcore stalwarts Holy Shit! played their opening slot as planned, getting things going with a literal fart and a song about Tab Cola, one of two tunes devoted to the much maligned soda brand. Alongside a selection of their other classics like “We Don’t Skate,” it was indicative of the sense of fun the band brings to a style of music some perceive as just pure aggression. They’re hard and fast as all get out, but not mean, and, over a decade later, still play with a fiery passion. Milwaukee’s music scene would be a much poorer place without them.
Bored Straight, another Brew City hardcore outfit, was by contrast much more aggressive, although musically they plumb a similarly ’80s style as Holy Shit!. Playing on the floor, the lead singer almost immediately started an annoying mosh pit in the limited space, shortly thereafter clambering over it onto the bar, getting his head caught in a slow-moving ceiling fan, not doing any real damage but disabling the black lights that spun around on it. That probably accidental party foul aside, it’s kind of a tired shtick, one which distracts from the actual substance of a pretty decent set of pummeling thrash.
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Their performance, like Holy Shit!’s, was brief and at the rate bands were being crossed of the bill, there was some talk of Soup Moat and one or two other bands whose members were coincidentally in attendance stepping in to play sets on borrowed equipment. It ended up being an L.A. band, Stoic Violence, who, as their name may suggest, was yet another hardcore group who had played with Bored Straight at a nearby house show earlier that day. They were well grounded in the SoCal basics, but also made room for some classic metal riffage amongst the speedier elements.
Headliners The New Flesh were another California band, this time San Francisco, who seemed a little out of place with the impromptu lineup, sharing some of that overdriven punk attitude but applying it to a rough strain of gothic, mostly English, ’80s post-punk. They would have made more sense coming after Technicolor Teeth, whose new single, “Blood Pool” explores the more shoegaze side of that coin, but they did just fine without them, ripping into a memorable, reverb-drenched set that was rather refreshing by that point. They could have used some context, but as they say, the show must go on.
