After discovering Infest during the winter of 1996/1997, some of us checked out a lot of faster bands. This lead us deep into the power violence scene, which had some crossover with the more youth crew scene we were accustomed to (97a is a good example of this) checking out. We made our way towards the classics like No Comment and Crossed Out and also gravitated near bands like Rorschach, Capitalist Causalities, Acme, and others. This led to modern bands like Charles Bronson, MK Ultra, and, of course, Spazz.
Oddly, there was little internet hype for this tour. I actually found out about it a few days before when I was paging through an issue of Maximum Rock N Roll in our local record store Music Emporium. Turned out someone in our crew had been given a flyer at the mall (lol, remember those days?) too. We had been to the Bates Lodge a bunch of times before, so John, Justin, CJ, and I packed into my car, probably, and headed up to Red Bank.
On the way up, we were excited to check out a new band called Full Speed Ahead. They were hyped on the flyer as having ex members of the mighty Human Remains. We packed up front expecting one thing, but getting something altogether different! Full Speed Ahead blasted through a set of Black Flag inspired hardcore, including covers of Youth Brigade (DC), Black Flag, and Negative Approach. Yes! We all danced around and went off, which kind of weirded out some of the more emo parts of the crowd.
After their set, we all bought demos (the first one with the Black Flag cover) and the band ran out, but took one of our addresses (I forget who?) and said they would mail one out to them. Awesome! I spoke to their bass player Will and we planned out an interview, which we would do through the mail sometime that summer. Until we saw them again the next spring opening for Breakdown, their demo was on non stop rotation for all of us.
Canephora played at this show too and my big memory of them is one of their members asking me about my Youth Of Today shirt and saying that they were the best live band he had ever seen. Cool. Hail Mary were hyped up a lot at the time as this real Born Against clone and I kind of heard it, but I never really got into them.
Spazz were the big band at this show and the crowd packed it in for their set. We all bounced around and moshed, which, again, bummed out some people in the audience, but we didn’t really give a fuck. Spazz were awesome and I would interview them soon enough as well. They had just played or were about to play this hilariously put together show in New York City too.
