With the Warped Tour now in full swing but not visiting New York for another month, I have still managed to find, and thus, attend, a show that displayed this amount of diverse bands and sounds, in the early-summer tour collaborated by Anti-Flag, albeit the size, number of bands, and venue. Nonetheless...

I was just about wrapping up my merch line activities when Tabula Rasa took the stage. I'd be lying to you if I told you they saved their best songs for last, because from where I was, they sounded great at first. So great in fact that my cousin (whom some of you may know as thriceequalsgod) yelled from eight feet away to buy "this band's CD"...for him, anyway. So, after picking up their A-F full length Role of Smith, I hauled a bit of ass back to some of the limited space in the middle to hear the rest of their set. Once again, I'd be lying to you if I told you this is "just the type of band Anti-Flag would sign to their label." This is not Destruction Made Simple, nor is it The Code. Instead, Tabula play an inexplicable melding of rock 'n roll, punk, and - I hate this term but I'll have to say it anyway - math rock; people might hate me for this comparison, but think Recover listening to a lot of Mars Volta. Great at first, and just sort of faded a little from there. Nonetheless, they closed out their set with some decent numbers.

Darkest Hour got the crowd clapping along to the Diff'rent Strokes theme before they blasted into their brand of flesh-searing metalcore. Fists flying, feet mid-air, DH played a half-decent dose of fury of good riffs and screaming that never let up. And let's get one thing straight, I hate metalcore, but for the genre, Darkest Hour are great at what they do.

Sometimes I think I take my New York/Long Island scene for granted because it's so good. When A Static Lullaby (a band I can't enough of) took the stage, I wasn't sure how responsive the crowd would be. Oh, they were responsive, and I imply in the positive notion. ASL jumped right into "Annunciate While You Masticate," and followed it up with "Charred Fields of Snow." The crowd's movements, finger pointing, it was all there. ASL praised us for how great the crowd was being several times, with Joe even swearing to us he was on the verge of tears. Eh, I couldn't give a shit either way, the band was rocking and not being dicks like a lot of rumors I've heard. As for the ego thing, yeah, Joe gave off a little bit of that with the constant mic raises and hi-fives to the crowd. But I mean, who can blame him, he's totally hot. Besides, what else is there to do when your job description basically just includes "occasional screaming?" I have no clue what the majors are gonna do with this guy when they eventually sign...and they definitely will. Love or hate them, you know it's inevitable. As for the rest of their set, they played their "This is Spinal Tap" tribute, "We Go to Eleven" (I did not know that), and made a "Saving Silverman" reference later on. All comedic movie dictations aside, "A Sip of Wine Chased With Cyanide" helped me and the rest of the crowd go apeshit, and they closed with "the Shooting Star that Destroyed Us All."

Now, from what I can understand, a lot of people dislike Anti-Flag, whether it be for what they think is hypocritical reasoning, their political views or whatever. Tell you what, Justin Sane and co. are no Jello Biafra or Noam Choasky, that's for sure, but when it comes to pointing out the simplicities of government fallacies, Anti-Flag are some of the best at such. The band gave me the realization that I've never had so much fun singing along at a show, as they opened with "No Borders, No Nations," which I'm sure couldn't have been a better opener, after hearing some static-induced GW quotes and world affairs. From there, they used their usual in-between banter to explain some things to us about social security, social structure issues, and the like. However, it was their music that really fueled the rest of the show. Fists pumping continuously, AF played the whoa-oh-spectrums of "Tearing Everyone Down" and "Angry, Young, and Poor." And they of course included the classics, like the rising vocal harmonies of "Die for the Government" and "Underground Network." The encore had them doing a cover of the Clash's "White Riot" (something else to sing along for even the parts of the crowd that had never heard the song) and finisihing up with "911 for Peace."

One of the better, more diverse shows I've been to lately, and for all the right reasons. This is definitely a trend being picked up as of late, whether a lot of people like it or not (see: Rx Bandits/No Motiv/Fairweather). It helps reflect the diverse tastes inhabited my many people, and finally these tastes are being fulfilled.