Crystal and I went to this show and maybe Chris Morris too? She was friends with the dudes in Tied Down, so I think we headed up to this show to check them out. All the bands were video recorded except for Tied Down, who were new school chugga chugga kind of stuff. Let’s say they actually covered Earth Crisis and that is a pretty good description of them.
Arcane were noisy, super technical, hardcore that was a few years ahead of the trends. Members of this band were later in Dillinger Escape Plan, which totally makes sense when you listen to them.
Bloodrust were a pretty metal band that played a bunch of these Bates Lodge shows back then. They were much more of a metal band than anything I would call hardcore, which, at this time, was definitely a point of clarification I was making for myself. I remember they smashed a statue of the Virgin Mary at one point and I that bothered me enough that I ended up doing a never printed interview with them about it. They consider it some anti-religion statement; I thought it was pretty silly and petty.
The other two bands that played were heavily influenced by Deadguy and bands like that. Time’s Up was a band that did a few records. I went to high school with one of their member’s younger brother Tim.
Tonsul was the other band. I think we went out to dinner with Tonsul and Tied Down afterwards. A dumb memory I have of this show was Crytal kissing her boyfriend in front of Chris and I and then I kind of wandered off sort of pissed. It wasn’t because we weren’t dating, but more like because she was kind of moving away from us a bit, which became an issue for our entire generation of hardcore kids in our town in different ways over the next few years. Chris tracked me down and was all “dude, you looked so pissed” and I was, which was so dumb.
