Love is in the Air at Hellfest: A Review
Nine bands unite in hopes of reinvigorating Purchase’s hardcore scene.
By Wyatt Hall
Blue and red lights washed over the stage and the nearly ground-level floor of Southside. Feet flung shamelessly through the air and fists swung as if they were punching ghosts. Bands screamed into the audience, commanding them to two-step with each breakdown, and the crowd obeyed. Someone was always being run into, punched or dragged back onto their feet. For a relentless four hours on September 12, nine hardcore bands turned a concert in a small venue into a homey ritual.
The strangest part was how familiar everything seemed as a first-timer. People I walk by in dorm halls and see sitting four seats down from me in class were either moshing in the crowd or playing instruments onstage with fury. Between sets, people funneled outside and chatted like nothing had happened inside, like no one had just blown their vocal cords out or kicked someone. For a scene built around guttural growls and violent-looking dancing, everyone was remarkably friendly. It is easy to watch videos of the hardcore shows and see it as relentless violence, but after one night, I saw community.
Prior to, and during the show, I made a point of talking to strangers. As my friend Sebastien Sifantus and I walked around, I noticed an older man sitting in the corner of the venue. He told me he was ‘the wheels’ for his child, who was attending the show separately from my friend and I. His kid enjoys hardcore shows much like he did in the ’80s. I asked him what he thought of 2-stepping and crowdkilling; he said the latter wasn’t really part of the scene when he was younger. As we watched someone stretch before entering the pit, he joked that he was jealous because of his bad knees.
Somehow, the conversation moved from hardcore to Camus and absurdism, the roles we fill in society, and his 30 years as a chef working 14-hour days in New York City. It was not the type of conversation you’d expect to have at a place like a hardcore show. Yet, that seemed to be the point: everyone was friendly enough to conversate.
A lot of people at the show weren’t even from here; they followed small bands, or didn’t even know who they were at all, and happened to end up on a college campus at a small show. These bands with modern metrics of at most 500 monthly listeners were pulling an impressive crowd.
After the event organizer William Paquet, a sophomore photography major, told the crowd to check out the vendors, I walked over and found a member of Roblox Tycoon, a Glens Falls brutal death-metal band, selling T-shirts. Over the next couple of hours, I found myself talking with them about a vast array of topics. The band yawned frequently, apologizing and stating that it was their third night playing a show in a row. They seem to thrive off touring, as indicated by upcoming shows at Bennington College and Instagram stories indicating hopes to expand past their local area. At one point, I mentioned that I was a fan of Inwater’s vocalist, and the drummer joked, “You’re gonna love our vocalist.”
A couple bands later, Roblox Tycoon walked on stage, and these approachable people suddenly seemed capable of locking eyes with me and beating me up. Their vocalist wrapped a mic cable around himself, somersaulted into the crowd, squealed in a sasscore style and growled like a death metal vocalist. The drummer screamed erratically, the bassist shrieked indiscernibly, and the guitarist echoed whatever sentiments the vocalist mumbled into the microphone. It was no surprise when I looked ahead of me later that night and witnessed the vocalist two-stepping to The Furrow’s set.
Other bands also did wild things to increase their stage presence. I talked to people in the back before the show that had a cowbell, vibraslap and two Domino’s pizza boxes. The two people, named Angus and Marco, said that, after hanging up posters around the school offering to do random things for money, they were paid $20 to come to the show and entertain during Deadline’s set. Eventually, as Deadline broke into their song ‘Domino’s’, both pizza boxes were thrown into the crowd and the two people giggled on stage as they frantically played a cowbell and a vibraslap. The boxes flew in the air, hit someone in the back of the head, got stomped on, but still never felt like they were out of place.
Locking eyes with various drummers towards the end of my time at Hellfest, I was enamored with sophomore Nicholas Parker, the drummer for The Furrow. Towards the end of the set, all instruments dropped out except for the drums, and Nick Parker launched into a blazing and impressive solo. Despite the crowd being emptier compared to the early evening, it was potentially the loudest it had been the entire night. Hands reached out to the drummer like he was a messiah, the crowd screamed in support and the drummer was too focused to break a smile.
I suppose the sense of community is what made the night as special as it was. “Hardcore at Purchase has seen better days,” William said when I asked about his thoughts on the scene, “I want people to strive for [better], and within that be able to appreciate a community that is inherently anti-establishment, anti-conformist and pro-community and anti-bigotry. In my opinion, the balance between introspective and music tied to the self is more common than music or noise tied to social, economic or political problems. And for a liberal arts college, I think that needs to change.”
What stood out to me most happened during a faster part of Roblox Tycoon’s set. I looked ahead and saw a couple that was dancing together to the heavy music. I thought about how, just mere feet in front of them, people were punching and shoving each other. There was a wall of two people between what the outside world would perceive as love and violence.
When asked about crowd etiquette, William stated, “I think etiquette comes with time… people just learn those things and hopefully with the right amount of poking around, people can learn to appreciate the culture and continue to create.” When two friends argue, the one who hurts the other has to reach out a hand and help them up. In the same way, after someone knocks another person down in a moshpit, they immediately reach out their hand, dust the person off and exchange a smile.
At Hellfest, what is love if not violently 2-stepping?
Comments