Badr Vogu, Mindless, Reivers, and Hesitation Wounds

This was a smoky as fuck show at Hazmat, I feel like my lungs lost a couple weeks of life from that one. The bands were all pretty fucking rad. There were a lot of people there that I knew, including a few I hadn't seen for a while, so I was a bit more social than usual and had a really good time.

First up was Hesitation Wounds from Oakland. I say they are a crusty hardcore band with heavy Japanese influence but people have disagreed with me. I hear a lot of Confuse style in the guitars. They are pretty new, I only started seeing them about six months ago but I have come to really like their shit. I talked with Andy, their guitar player, and we might try to get a D-beat band together soon.


Next up was Reivers. They are another really good band that hasn't really been around for a long time but kill on the local DIY circuit. They are a Will Sedition band with most of Salted Earth doing pretty much the same thing as Salted Earth but with a new guitar player. Female-fronted political crust with a heavy hardcore lean, they are the sort of band I would want to be in. They had tapes out for sale but packed them up before I could grab one. I waited till the end of the show because my pockets were full and they had already gone by the time I made my stumbling way back to the table.


The only band of the night that I hadn't seen before was Mindless who I had heard many good things about. They didn't disappoint with a brutal crust attack with lots of metal elements. Another band with a intense female singer, she kept crashing into the crowd the entire set. I tried to buy their record after the show but they were apparently out, at least that's what the confused dude at the merch table said.


Badr Vogu finished the night up with their doomed out crust sound. They are a little fast for my taste in doom but they deliver super heavy and gnarly jams. When I think of the term stenchcore I feel like they fit in that category but they have a lot of black metal strains so I don't know if they would belong in said subgenre. Fucking different subcategories in this kind of music are going to drive me nuts. If you like heavy crusty metal and smoking weed this is a band for you.

Great show, I was hammered at the end and grinning. Then I broke a pedal post on the bike I was riding on the way home and had to walk across Oakland at 1 in the morning. Fucking awesome. Needless to say, I slept in.