Chinese food and hardcore.

Over the years, my brain has been conditioned to seek out Chinese food before shows. Maybe it's because Philadelphia is so saturated in Asian food markets that I can't help but see some mandarin characters emblazoned in neon on the side of a building and want to eat there. Chinese food is usually the best compliment to hardcore.

"Pete, do you know the Sex Positions?" my friend had asked another friend.

"Not all of them."

Really only one of the kids we went with knew anything about Sex Positions. Although, I was expecting crazy amounts of techno and synths and all that jazz, but I ended up being pretty disappointed. The most electronic the band ever got was between songs when they played a tape recording of weird noises. They don't even have a synth player. From all I heard about them, I don't know why I was expecting techno. Y'know, something like The Rise or that whole idea. Sex Positions definetly had their moments, but I don't feel like I would ever feel compelled to see them again.

I could tell that I wasn't really feeling them when their set did not increase my appetite for more duck sauce. The white rice and beef fried broccoli sitting in my stomach were not satisfied. Some other band came on that was very heavy and slow. I went outside to release the delicious build-up of MSG within my intestinal walls.

It wasn't until Daughters that I felt the satisfaction that I could normally associate with my meal. To tell you the truth I didn't know much about Daughters either, besides that they were ridiculous. Their singer sounds like some drugged out dude between songs, but during songs he is a banshee from hell being fucked in the ass. This is definite spazz-core like Blood Brothers if they didn't take their ritalin, or like The Locust if they did. The perpetually unemotive crowd finally opened up like a fucking Tae Kwon Do class came pouring in from upstairs. Maybe it's the association between martial arts and hardcore dancing that gives my stomach-full-of-little-China that happy feeling. I couldn't tell you the names of any songs, or really when some songs ended and others began, but Daughters brought the insanity. They brought their signature so-high-pitched-it-could-be-someone-messing-around-with-a-violin guitars, which perfectly complemented their sporadic bursts of atomically dense breakdowns. I could feel General Tso's pride bubbling inside my stomach when the entire pit did a foot stomping Donkey Kong death march during a heavy chugging guitars, head banging moment. Another definite highlight was when they flicked a switch that made their audio sound like it was exploding as if someone had put a Daughters 7" into a buzzsaw instead of a record player. I thought there was something wrong with their audio at first, but then it cut out and the song continued and then they did it again. Totally rad. Their set, like their songs, was very short, but still left a lasting impression.

I was going to give this one star before Daughters came on, but they definetly saved this show, so I bumped it up to three and a half. Daughters' main drawback is that a lot of their songs sound very similar, and it would be cool to see them expand their horizons with where they can take their ridiculously wild and Chinese-food-worthy sound in the future.