WHO: Unarmed, Positive Aggression, From This Day Forward, and Imprisoned.
WHERE: Carleton Place FireHall Youth Centre
A hardcore favourite, Unarmed is what I’d describe as political hardcore, but they describe themselves as crust-core. A band that doesn’t believe that moshpits are ‘anything goes’, warned everyone beforehand that they don’t tolerate any violence. When the music started, I was surprised to find they weren’t as high energy as usual. Still I think they played a pretty good show. Other members in the band include Brendan Flynn on bass, Howie Joyce and Matt Peltier on vocals and Garth Myles on drums.
Next played From This Day Forward, a positive hardcore band, new on the scene. Members include Matt Ford on bass(ex-sumogrimace) Adam Solomonian on guitar(The Swingset) with Nate Simpson guitar and vocals, Matt Laforge on vocals and Josh Dyck on drums. These guys are amazing and really interact with the crowd. Laforge loves to mosh into the audience during songs and unfortunately that makes him extremely hard to photograph, especially if you’re in the moshpit. Some things definitely not to forget about this show was Laforge’s ‘test pattern’ shirt, Matt Ford’s ‘bass playing’ faces and Adam’s alter-ego “hardcore punk extradordinaire.”
Following Carleton Place’s FTDF was out of towners from Brockville: Positive Aggression. These guys were pretty good actually, and I really enjoyed them. Band members included: Shane Watt on guitar, Blake Duffy vocals and guitar, Jay Stilnovich on drums and his brother Greg: vocals and bass. They had brought their own cheering section and from the whistling, shouting and various audience members getting up and singing with the band, it was evident. The band, unable to actually pinpoint their type of music, told me to just listen and figure it out for myself, and I can honestly say I can’t exactly put a type of music to them either except I’d describe them as hardcore rock.
Concluding the night was another Carleton Place Hardcore band, Imprisoned. I’d say these guys were pretty good. The mix of classical guitar and emo-hardcore was amazing, and the amount of energy guitarist Josh Dyck had was incredible, but like Matt Laforge from FTDF it made him extremely hard to fix on and get a decent photo. Some highlights of their set were: Josh Dyck’s rendition of America’s anthem, and the fans screaming out the chorus to “Drug Free”. In between songs was an interruption in the set by Brock with a request for a camera for the cops. I was on the verge of donating mine when two things occurred to me. A) It was my mother’s camera and if anything happened to it, she’d kill me. B) It was the newpaper’s film and I didn’t know exactly what the police wanted to borrow the camera for. God knows what they would have thought if they found some guy’s mugshot among the band pictures. A good vegan potluck rounded out the night, with whole wheat perogies, fried rice, corn chips with salsa and pita bread with hummus.