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Sat. July 22 - Baltimore, MD
Just wanted to write to tell everyone that came out to the Next Step Up, Stout, xLooking Forwardx, and Vengence Theory show last Saturday at Hal Daddy's thanx for making it a good time. And to everyone that didn't make it out, you missed one helluva good show. Vengence Theory started the evening off with a brutal blend of new school breakdowns in the vein of Hatebreed and old school flava that got the crowd fired up for Harford County's xLooking Forwardx. Looking Forward set the crowd off with their excellent blend of late 80's - early 90's inspired hardcore with ruff-ass new school breakdowns. The crowd of 200+ persons was singing along and dancing and getting the energy levels siked up for Stout. By the time that Stout took the stage there were so many people crammed into the downstairs at Hal's that there was an overflow of people out the back door! Stout set shit off in true Baltimore fashion with Brutalizing breakdowns and blinding burst beats. The crowd was going nuts and singing along and stage diving. If you haven't checked out Stout's live show, be sure to see em' for a knife-checkin' nazi beatin' spin kickin' dose of Balticore. Finally Next Step Up took the stage at about 12:15am to play for a crowd of heads standing on top of heads. The downstairs at Hal's was so crowded that there was no room to move, nowhere to escape from brutality of Baltimore's longest running and most well known hardcore kings, Next Step Up. NSU played one of their best sets in recent memory, brining out old classics from their first album like Heavy, and In Our World, they played songs from Fall From Grace, Intent to Kill and their Breaking Point CD as well. Seeing NSU live in such a small club made the show a much more personal experience with tons of people on stage and off interacting with the band. Amazingly, the kidz still had tons of energy left after going all-out for Vengence Theory, Looking Forward, and Stout. Mad pile-on's and sing alongs, a brutal mosh pit, no fights, a good vibe of unity ran through the whole crowd. One thing that helped to make the feeling of unity even stronger was when a van-load of Nazi skinheads that had shown up looking for trouble realized that they were about to be severely brutalized and beaten and decided they'd better go and harrass some kids that wouldn't fight back somewhere else! The singer from NSU made a speach about how all the kids have to stand together as one and not let nazi's come to shows and beat up on kids 10 to 1. All in all a great show and i want to thank everyone who came out to support especially from so far away, 2 kidz from Belgium came to the show and a girl from Germany too, tons of kids came out from Virginia and Rockville and DC and Harford County too. Thanks everyone, hardcore is back in Baltimore!


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