That Bates Lodge venue in Red Bank did a ton of shows from like 95-97 both big and small. Tied Down, Tonsul, and Rigid played a bunch of those shows. I think Tonsul sounded like Deadguy/Rorschach kind of stuff?
Outlook did a demo that, if I recall right, kind of had a melodic Turning Point vibe to it. We used to run into a member of that band on LBI in the summer from time to time.
E-Town Concrete were totally not my thing at all, but they were pretty nice guys. Random metal dudes in my high school got into that band and didn’t believe me “I knew the band.” LOL. That would happen a few years later with another band that blew up. “No way a dork like you knows them!” The way normies think of musicians as royalty is so fucking weird.
I had interviewed One King Down right around this time, but it wouldn’t come out for like a year, and they were a decent attempt at combining early 90s stuff like Burn with the EVR/Victory/etc “new school” sound. They covered Burn and Inside Out at this show.
Some weird tension at this show because one of the young ladies in our crew had started dating someone and there was a FEELING (or whatever) she was flaunting it in front of a few dudes in our crew who had liked her. There was dissension in our ranks starting to boil that would explode a bit when school went back.
