Photos by Nathan Riehl.
This past weekend (August 8-9) I attended the first-ever Wrecking Ball, a punk, hardcore, and emo festival held at one of the Southeast’s most reputable venues, The Masquerade in Downtown Atlanta. Here I am, a few days later, after a total of 16 hours of driving and a hardly attached head from so much head banging still trying to wrap my brain around the fact that I saw so many once-in-a-lifetime bands alongside some of my favorite hardcore and emo acts. Here’s a recap of Saturday, Day 1 of the festival. Recap for Day 2 here.
Nathan and I arrived an hour before the first block of bands was set to play at 3:00pm. The festival was situated across four stages: Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and the awesome outdoor Music Park behind the venue. Sprinkled around the venue were tasty food trucks and merch tables, one of which was the Run for Cover Records table. If I had more money I totally would have went HAM on this table. There were bins full of RFC and other assorted 7″ and 12″ records, cool shirts, band flags, the whole enchilada. While digging through the merchandise was a fun affair, the blistering southern summer heat and nearing 3:00 kick off time drew us upstairs to Heaven (get used to the puns), for newly-signed Sargent House quartet blis. from Atlanta.
blis. started their set by assuring the crowd that The Masquerade was not actually closing, despite what the rumors and the festivals name would have you think. They played a set dedicated to front man Aaron Gusset-Posey’s newly born child, who happened to be sick on that day. Songs consisted of material from their newest EP Starting Fires In My Parents House. Being up front for this set didn’t really allow me to hear the vocals over the heavy bass tones, but the twinkly guitar lines shined through the mix. One thing I thought was particularly cool about this band was the drummer, Jimi Ingman, besides his tight grooves and godly tom sounds, plays in a local Orlando band called City of Ifa who I’ve watched in intimate house show settings throughout Central Florida.Â
We headed back out into the heat to the Purgatory stage for the next band, Captain, We’re Sinking, a punk rock band from Scranton, PA. The members went back and forth between the driving pop-punk songs making jokes about the heat and other things, making the otherwise miserable act of standing still in the direct sunlight a fun one. The “Don’t you hate when you go to buy orange juice and it’s all Sunny Delight?” joke kind of went over my head, seeing as real orange juice is abundant in Central Florida.
Turnover from Virginia Beach was next in Hell. I was super excited to watch this band, whose recent LP Peripheral Vision had been on repeat on my commutes to work for the last month or so. Adding to the punk-turned-shoegaze plethora of albums lately, Turnover somehow stood out from the bunch. Maybe it was the catchy melodies that the band had perfected on their previous albums, maybe it was the dreamy guitar leads, but one thing is for sure, it was fantastic in a live setting. The set started a few minutes early for some reason, something that happened all weekend, so I walked in to “Cutting My Fingers Off” being played to a packed out room. I was surprised to see front-man Austin Getz had shaved his head, which was a cool change. I was totally taken away from the start of the set, all of my favorites from the new LP were played.
Since the set started early, it also ended early, allowing me to run upstairs to catch the last bit of Pianos Become the Teeth’s set. I could feel the energy (and the sweat) as soon as I walked into them playing my favorite track from their second album, “I’ll Be Damned,” which was being mostly sung now given Kyle Durfey’s new clean, beautiful vocal direction. Security was leading all newcomers to the back of the room, as it was near over capacity. They played a few more songs and ended with the one of the more popular songs from the new album, “Repine”.
I followed the crowd back down to Hell to catch a few songs from The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, whose current tour only consists of 7 members. The few songs I caught were all from their second full length Whenever, If Ever. As if the crowd wasn’t already going crazy, former guitarist/screamy vocalist Greg Horbal jumped on stage for “Fightboat” and the crowd went batshit crazy. I had to cut out of this set early because Title Fight’s set was starting outside at the Music Park stage.
The staple hardcore-gone-shoegaze four-piece opened with “Rose of Sharon” from their latest, Hyperview. As expected, the crowd popped off right from the start, as it’s is one of the few songs on Hyperview that retains the mosh-pit worthy punk influence of their previous albums. Bass man Ned Russin particularly made his stage presence known, hopping and jamming out all over the stage in a fresh pair of retro Air Jordans. The setlist went through their whole discography, even playing songs from one of their earlier EPs The Last Thing You Forget. This is one of the coolest things about watching this band post-Hyperview— the songs flow seamlessly from hardcore punk to shoegazing. The band closed out in an equally as popped off finale of “27” and invited the crowd to their later after show with Foundation.
Screamo three-piece Old Gray was just starting to play on the Purgatory stage as I made my way back towards the building. The bass and guitar player were sporting some gnarly tank tops for the heat, Wawa and Chicago Bulls respectively.  They opened with “Wolves,” the first track from their 2013 release An Autobiography. This is one of Nathan’s favorite bands, so he snapped a few pictures and handed me his camera so he could be apart of the wave of emotion that was flowing through the crowd. There were literally kids crying to the spoken word track “Show Me How You Self Destruct,” that’s how heartfelt this band is. It was just as moving and intense seeing this band the second time as it was the first.Â
We took a short break to go get some coffee and had the pleasure to walk with Nick Kwas, the current violinist of The World is a Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die about the festival and his experiences playing with Old Gray and other bands before coming back to the venue to catch legendary 80s New York straight-edge hardcore band Judge.Â
This was by far one of the coolest and most brutal sets of the festival. But indeed, The Masquerade was prepared for the worst by having a few Atlanta police officers on the scene, who would be lying to say that they weren’t feeling the nastiness of some of the quick and pounding sounds coming from this power quartet. I definitely heard some clocks during the breakdowns— the crew in the pit for this band were some of the biggest and burliest dudes I saw at the festival. Yeah, I was definitely watching from a distance.
Everyone quickly migrated back to the Music Park for the Day 1 finale, DESCENDENTS. This was arguably the tightest and most impressive set of the day, with Milo Auckerman and friends playing a set that hadn’t lost any of the energy from the band’s prime time in the 80s.
Over 20 songs were pounded out one after the other in true punk fashion, only stopping for Milo to read off the All-O-Gistics sign made famous during the All tours. There was a kid brought on stage to read the commandments off to the crowd alongside Auckerman, who I’m not sure was his kid or someone else. “Thou shalt not partake of decaf! Thou shalt not suppress flatulence! Thou shalt not commit hygiene!” were some of the funnier ones. Truly a once in a lifetime experience for a 90s kid and a great ending to the Day 1 festivities. But the party was far from over.
A line extended multiple blocks away from the venue for the Title Fight/Foundation and HUM aftershows. Seeing as I had already seen Title Fight earlier in the day, and wanted to witness the HUM for myself, I decided to attend the Heaven after party. After waiting around for nearly an hour, the fuzz warriors themselves took to the stage.
At this point it was 1 in the morning and I was nearly falling asleep from the activities earlier in the day, but as soon as the chords from “Little Dipper”, the first track of You’d Prefer An Astronaut, kicked in I was wide awake. It’s hard to sleep when walls of distortion and cutting drums are literally rattling your bones to the inner core. I couldn’t believe the sound coming from these guys; even when it was quiet, Title Fight and Foundation were still rattling the wood floors from downstairs. I kept thinking of an Aristocats “Everybody Wants To Be A Cat” kind of thing happening where the floor would cave in and HUM would still be jamming out on stage. If you weren’t wearing earplugs, you were definitely regretting it the next day. The setlist consisted of songs from all three HUM albums and an encore of “The Pod” and “The Scientists.”
HUM could not have concluded Day 1 of The Wrecking Ball in a better way, and we walked back to my car stoked that the next day’s lineup was just as good as if not better than the first.
blis.
