Last Night Modern Life Is War, Trap Them, Trash Talk @ El Corazon
posted by on October 2 at 13:09 PM
To cop a popular movie reference, modern hardcore is like high school girls - I keep getting older but it stays the same age. I can’t think of another genre that celebrates the lack of evolution in it’s music more than modern hardcore. And that’s what the kids want. They love it. It’s like the same ten songs are being written over and over again, and if the band breaks from that structure they’re ostracized. But for the kids who are into it, it’s their lifeblood, and it never seems to get boring. Over time, most genres of music must either evolve or die, but the fans of modern hardcore put all the pressure on the music to stay exactly the same. Forever. I am so bored of modern hardcore. The first band I saw was Trash Talk. I’ve seen Trash Talk twenty times, but this was my first time seeing Trash Talk.
The fact that Trap Them is touring with Trash Talk and Modern Life Is War is a bit of a conundrum. It seems like there’s a vague effort to unify the fans of modern hardcore with those more into progressive hardcore by having bands from both camps tour together, but it just makes for weird shows. This show reminded me of the last time I saw Converge at El Corazon, and they were touring with Terror. Other than superficially being dubbed “hardcore” these bands have little to nothing in common. Terror is the epitome of modern hardcore: lots of half-time judding, chants about being tough and/or overcoming strife, and there’s change all over the floor that everyone is trying to pick up. Converge is the epitome of progressive hardcore: they constantly push themselves sonically and technically to play tough music that is fiercely unique.
Trap Them are something of protégés to Converge, having recorded everything they’ve done with Converge guitarist/engineer Kurt Ballou. Their music easily falls into the same camp, and is immediately off-putting to kids who were expecting to hear the same band they just heard three times before. As great as Trap Them played they were playing to the wrong crowd, and had the unfortunate task of performing with no energy coming back their direction. The bassist and drummer would yell jokingly back and forth at each other between each song, “This is horse shit!” One guy in the front of the crowd (I think he was the singer of Lahar, or a look-alike at least) turned to the people standing bored-looking around him and said, “Aren’t these guys WEIRD? Huh? Isn’t his WEIRD!?!” I would have loved to see this show with kids who cared.
What it turns out the kids did care about was Modern Life Is War. As soon as they started playing the whole floor started skanking. This band is at least trying to put their own flavor on their genre, and sometimes they succeed at it. But too often they fall into the same old breakdowns and chants that the crowd demands, like zombies crying for brains. If anything, it is always fun to see kids jump over each other to chant into the mic, to see crazy stage-diving flips, and to watch people beat the shit out of the floor with their fists. Like the music, that spectacle will never change, but at least that part is fun to watch.
Nailed it. Nice one, Jeff.
Amen, brother.
Nothing says 'hardcore' like the Geddy Lee signature Jazz Bass.
You're a little late there JK, HC died in 1985. It's all so generic has been the most audible complaint since 1988.
And yet the kids keep coming.
And yet, both audiences are unified by their mutual appreciation of those stupid fucking "Fidel Castro" hats.
Converge has a tendency to ALWAYS tour with crappy, generic hardcore bands. I'm generally disappointed with every band they play with (the exceptions being last time with Mastodon [although that was definitely the worst Converge show I've ever seen], and at the original Paradox with American Nightmare).
Trap Them are really good though, you're right.
Very interesting concert review. My experience in Seattle was that the kids still loved the chugga-chugga macho Hardcore stuff circa 1996, but were real slow to pick up on the newer extreme prog-metal stuff (the music you read about in Decibel mag), hence the lack of enthusiasm for Trap Them.
Does Seattle even have a decent "metal" scene?
The same can be said for for any genre, be it post punk, r&b, surf rock, minimalist, etc. I love your writing, Jeff, but writing off "modern hardcore" as being a bunch of cloned rehashes is a little silly. There are a lot of things that can make a band great besides being innovative. Trial, for example, was nothing new as far as hardcore goes, but were fucking amazing none the less, largely for their ability to make their political and social commentary vibrant and live through their music in a really eloquent way (and yeah, eloquence in hardcore may have been an innovative thing at the time). Then again, the stranger did declare that my band is little more than a mid-90's emo rehash. so whateves.
HC stagnated as it became redundant and formal in the late mid-'80s, its revolutionary weight was lost as it became a "pop" form. And no matter how much intent there may be with contemporary HC, the last 20 years of HC's formal traditionalism undercuts it's being angry in the face of all that is evil...I guess all the screaming at the wall, did NOT make it fall!
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