The website Another Rainy Saturday has an excellent timeline for the leaders of the new school, Mad Rad...

Pic by Rabid Child Images.

When folks talk about the best live bands they’ve ever seen, a few names immediately come to my mind. There was my first show ever—Fugazi at the University of Hawaii back in ’91. The entire band was drenched in sweat halfway through the first song; the bass felt like I was getting punched in the chest; and, of course, Ian Mackaye lectured the crowd and paid some dude $5 to leave. There was that Belle & Sebastian show in September of 2001, just a few days after the World Trade Center buildings went down. There was so much tension and anxiety in the air, and the humble melodies orchestrated by the thirteen Scots on stage felt like the perfect salve to an aching crowd. There was the Neurosis show at the Old Fire House where they blew the power, the Jawbreaker show at the Capitol Theater Backstage where the surge from the crowd nearly pushed the makeshift stage off the five-foot-drop onto the theater floor, the Roseland Theater show where I first saw Melvins perform with Big Business and they wrapped up the set with my two favorite songs (“The Bit” and “Lovely Butterfly”, for the record). Those were magical moments.

But the very first concert that pops into my mind? For whatever reason, on the occasions when the topic of the best live set comes up in conversation, I always think back to a show at the Up & Down Club in Ballard back in the summer of ’97. A band called Jesuit from Virginia Beach was rolling through town with local underdogs Harkonen. I’d caught Jesuit a couple of times the summer prior when my band played a few shows with them on the East Coast. They kinda reminded me of power-violence pioneers Crossed Out—alternating between these blistering blast-beat grind moments and then lunging into these punishingly heavy-handed half-time riffs. Those shows were pretty decent, but nothing prepared me for their set in Seattle. They set up on the floor of the venue and a semi-circle of hesitant attendees encompassed the band, arms crossed. Then the band kicked in and the normally stoic Seattle crowd erupted. One moment the band was blazing through their machine-gun tempo material, and then dropping into these massive quarter-note power chord riffs that sounded like the thundering of the Apocalypse. The band and the audience were completely unbridled. One guitar player was batting off careless dancers with the neck of his guitar; the other guitarist was alternating between frothing at the mouth into the microphone and yelling through the pick-ups of his guitar. Every song descended into unstructured mayhem, a complete disregard notes and rhythm. It was sheer violence. The only other band I’ve seen come remotely close to that level of genuine malice were grind-legends Assuck, and Jesuit trumped them ten-fold. The show left me completely shell-shocked.

Jesuit lasted another year, disbanding in 1998. They left behind a demo, two seven-inches, and a handful of compilation tracks, all currently out of print. Singer/guitarist Nate Newton now plays bass for Converge and guitarist Brian Benoit went on to serve in Dillinger Escape Plan until arm and shoulder injuries left him unable to play. Magic Bullet Records is currently working on a discography of their material. All of this information is basically a lead up to an announcement that Jesuit is doing a one-off reunion show on April 9th, 2011 with Unbroken and Indecision. Unfortunately, it’s happening in New York City.

I know reunions are never the same, and nothing is going to come close to that spectacle thirteen years ago, but I may have to cash in some frequent flyer miles regardless.