Saw Envy tonight and it was a pretty good show. I spoke to people that flew in from both Seattle and San Francisco to see this show...in the basement of the Dirst Unitarian Church. Another guy apparently drove up from Texas. I was expecting a sea of black hoodies, so I prepared accordingly and wore a baby blue t-shirt.
First off, I want to say that I don't know much about hardcore. I mean, I've dabbled here and there, but I never really got that into it. It seems to follow a pretty standard formula (early Black Flag riffs slowed down and turned up, sometimes sped and turned up). but to me there's little variety in most of the scene. There's very few hardcore bands that get any sort of reaction nowadays, and that's only because the median of the genre makes up so much of the stuff that's out there, filled with energy and semi-conscious lyrics, but rarely more. Envy's album caught me off guard, so I decided to check it out.
The first band I caught, Malady, came on and played for anout 45 minutes. After about five songs the lead singer went "This is our last song, then Envy." which I thought was kinda funny. Apparently, Malady is made up of like five mambers form different bands, including City of Caterpillar(?), and Mannequin, which sounds like an East German rock band from the early nineties. They were pretty good. but nothing that i remember as notable.
Envy was fantastic. They played tight and really got to the crowd, who barely moved more than the carefully placed nod, but then this is philly, and we've got a reputation for it. If you've heard the album then you know what to expect. They pounded through and then cooled down every song in their set. Cottonelle (like that? I'm two steps fom clever!) noted that like Sigur Ros, this band could be just as easily sitting down, or at least in a staggered auditorium. I had fun.


Quotes from actual dialogue overhead at the show tonight:

"They're so adorable! I want to take one of them home with me!"

"I can't wait until Atmosphere plays next month. He Smokes it live!"

"Did he learn to sing English because of this tour?"