“So here’s to our sleepless nights and singalongs/to the new kids and the old ones, this is our night and our show/the love once shared, belittled and betrayed/is not lost.” –With Honor, “To Believe”
The lifespan of most good hardcore bands is a short one — a few years bursting with creation, expression, and ending ultimately with dissolution. For a great hardcore band, this dissolution often comes too soon, when the band still has perhaps years of unrealized potential, unreleased material, and innumerable live shows in which to make a positive impact on the lives of their audiences. With Honor was such a band. When I heard the band was reuniting for a show in Connecticut, I knew I had to be there to be a part of it.
There were already crowds of people milling around both inside and outside the venue when I arrived at the Hungarian Club in Wallingford, Connecticut. It’s a nice venue, with a waist-high stage and plenty of room for people to pack in. It felt like an appropriate venue for a With Honor reunion as Wallingford is a part of Connecticut hardcore history, having hosted countless shows through the years at various venues around town.
I walked into the venue just as Tabernackle were taking the stage and headed up front to watch their set. Tabernackle from Providence, Rhode Island are a relatively new band, with a seven-inch out on Willow Tree Records recorded with their old vocalist. New vocalist Tom Zannini and the rest of the band (including a fill-in second guitarist for this show) played tight and with lots of energy, but despite their talents I was not into their sound. I usually love thrashy hardcore, but the songs they played during their set sounded a bit generic for my taste, lacking any sort of signature flair to make them stand apart from other bands in their genre. The band just recorded a new seven-inch, so hopefully there will be songs on that to change my mind.
Up next was another relatively new band, Connecticut’s own Nation of Thieves. Added to the show at the last minute to replace Reignition (whose van broke down), they drove two hours from the beach in Rhode Island to make it to the venue in time for their set. Prior to the show I had been hearing great things about this band, and they exceeded the hype. Featuring three members of the original lineup of the good but short-lived Connecticut-based band Generations, Nation of Thieves sound like all your favorite post-hardcore bands from the late ’80s and early ’90s (CIV, Supertouch, etc.) rolled into one band, but with enough quality song writing to give them their own unique sound. The mix of rocking riffs and heavy breakdowns from Generations vets Chris Richter and Preston Hyer on guitar and bass, with newcomers “CT Keith” and Rob Granoth on second guitar and drums filling out the band, alternately get your head bobbing and make you want to mosh and sing along. The passionate lyrics, intense screaming mixed with heartfelt almost brooding singing, and awesome stage presence of former Generations singer Jim Bach make Nation of Thieves a great band to both see and hear live. Their song “The Silence…” from their demo was by far one of my favorite songs of their set, and demands multiple listens.
Following Nation of Thieves was the reunion set of Ambitions. Ambitions formed in the wake of With Honor’s breakup and featured three of its members, but with two of them playing different instruments. While I was never really into them while they were around, the crowd was very into them. They were the first band of the show to get a large crowd response with plenty of sing-alongs, stage dives, and dancing. They played a mix of newer and older songs in their catalogue including crowd favorites “Uphill Battle” and “Playing Dead.” Hearing this set made me appreciate this band in a new light, and understand the comparisons made between them and Dave Smalley-era Dag Nasty. Though no longer an active band, Ambitions spent some time in the studio earlier this year to record a song for an upcoming Chain of Strength tribute album, and found some time to record some new material of their own as well. A new EP, Surface to Air, is the result of their studio time. Set to release later this summer, it merits checking out.
After Ambitions, Hostage Calm took the stage. Hostage Calm formed in 2007 and has quickly become one of the hardest working bands in today’s hardcore scene. This set marked the debut of their new drummer Fred Grave, a skilled drummer with a long resume of awesome bands to his credit (The First Step, Fired Up, and numerous fill-in appearances). Fred is a solid addition to an already solid band, and this was easily the best sounding Hostage Calm set I can remember. They opened their set with a cover of the instrumental “secret track” from With Honor’s first LP Heart Means Everything. From there, they launched into a set that mixed newer and older songs, and I have to say I was digging on every song. At one point, when the vocalist Chris Martin asked if the audience had any requests for old songs, the audience responded with requests for songs from the band At All Costs, the former band of several Hostage Calm members. Chris only laughed saying that those songs were “too old.” Between songs, he thanked both With Honor and Ambitions for putting on the show and inviting them to play. He cited those two bands as main inspirations for the members of Hostage Calm beginning to write and play music themselves.
From my vantage point, it seems that in a few years time other bands will be looking back, and citing Hostage Calm as one of the bands that first inspired them. The band is touring all summer in support of their new self-titled album, set to drop July 20th, and I for one can’t wait to get my hands on a copy, and see them when they return to play Connecticut in August.
Finally after Hostage Calm was the moment everyone in the room had been waiting for: the With Honor reunion. It had been a bit over three years since I had last seen With Honor play a show, and judging by the age of the crowd, about half were probably seeing With Honor for the first time. After a few words from Todd, the singer, the band launched into their first song of the night, “Like Trumpets,” the opening track from their 2005 album This is Our Revenge on Victory Records. Within seconds of the opening chords people were stage diving and generally going crazy. When Todd started singing, people piled on top of each other to get to the front and sing along. A few of the guys from Tabernackle and their friends wore Hawaiian shirts and board shorts and were stage diving with Styrofoam body boards that had “RIX” written on the bottom (for Rhode Island straightedge). An inflatable killer whale soon joined the stage diving shenanigans as people tried to ride Shamu on top of the crowd, but to little success. The band didn’t know what to make of the spectacle, but didn’t miss a note in their playing. They followed “Like Trumpets” with two songs from their first LP Heart Means Everything — “All Hope Aside” into “Third Generation” before pausing to tune and catch drinks of water. During the break, Todd took a moment to talk and introduce the next song.
“We’re all here because we wanted to come take in this show. It’s amazing that whether it’s this hall, it’s down the street…that there are people like Mark, there are people like Hostage Calm, coming up setting up shows, enjoying music, and putting ideas on the table. Seeing what sticks [and] trying to learn something about the world together. When you look around you don’t see someone who just made [something] and placed it in front of you to eat or to believe without question. We love this kind of thing, we love what this has done to our lives…the independences that we feel is imparted into our experience, and this song is about just loving that and sticking up for it. Not believing in violence, and going so far as to get in the way when it comes around It’s called ‘More than Heroes,’ and if you guys know it, I want to hear your voices.”
“More than Heroes” is one of the most popular With Honor songs, and the four minutes of this song were probably the craziest point of the show. After “Heroes,” the band seamlessly transitioned into “Gun for Hire,” another song from their split with The Distance. Most of the remainder of their set was composed of songs off This is Our Revenge with another song from the split, “Long Story Short,” thrown in the middle. I didn’t know the songs from “Revenge” quite as well as the earlier stuff, but was stoked when they finally launched into “Bridges and Gaps,” the opening track of their self-titled EP. I sang along and stage dove a few times, and was amped for more, but it ended up being their last song because of a noise ordinance/curfew in the city requiring them to end the show by 10:30. Looking at their setlist after the show, I was bummed to see that my favorite song, “To Believe,” got cut from the set due to time, but I was still stoked to have had the chance to see With Honor again for what will likely be the final time.