Well it was another Friday night show at the Church, and this time we got ourselves a nice little hardcore line up. Although it lacked any real blockbusters, it was the usual mix of locals and touring bands, but since it was a weekend there was a pretty good crowd.

First up was Looks Like Rain. I’ll be honest, these guys never did anything for me, and they continue to do nothing for me. Most of the crowd seemed to be thinking the same thing as there was very little reaction to them, a trend which would not continue through the night. After these guys Junction 18 came up. I believe they were originally slated to be the opener, but their late arrival shuffled things up a bit. They were only given about 15 minutes to play, and seemed to spend about half of that apologizing for their lateness. I thought they played pretty good poppy emo, not too unlike… well… about a 1000 other bands. However, with a noticeable lack of breakdowns and sing alongs in their music, the majority of the crowd seemed rather disinterested.

DC’s own For the Living was next. Pretty much straight up fast paced hardcore here. The crowd finally started to show some life as they played about half new material off a yet to be released full length and several off their album Bridges Burned including “”Turn Your Head”" and their closer “”Chapters End.”" Well, it was time for a break, so I missed the majority of Right Brigade, who were never one of my favorites. However, I made sure to return in time for Over My Dead Body.

Aside from hearing good things about them, they just have the coolest logo with those little skeleton guys in hoodies. Since they were a fairly new band all the way from San Diego, I wasn’t expecting too much from the crowd, but there was a group of 10 or 15 people always ready with the back up vocals whenever they played anything off their EP, “”No Runners.”" They also mixed in quite a few off an album to be released at the end of summer. Although they had your typical straight-edge songs, they also threw in a few dealing with a bit more ponderous topics such as universal health care and racism. However, it wasn’t all blue skies and sunny days… I can not in good conscience fail to mention one thing that bugged me about these guys. Ok, like everyone and their mother saw your mosh parts coming, they aren’t really that subtle, do you really have to introduce them with a “”mosh it up”" or anything of the sort? Oh yeah, and to me, doing a minor threat cover is almost like cheating. Although I must admit, for the 45 seconds they played “”Straight Edge”" the place did go buck ass wild.

Well it was finally time for Bane. Now I’ve seen these guys plenty of times before, but for some reason this just seemed different. It was just some sort of epiphany I had that Bane really was awesome. I don’t know how to describe it. All of a sudden, every stupid little dance Aaron did, every chord, everything just made sense. Well anyways… they kicked it off with the instant classic “”Can We Start Again?”" and although I don’t think the crowd ever hit that level of insanity again after that point, there was plenty of moshing, crowd surfing, and singing along throughout the set. As usual, they played off all their albums, including a recent split with Adamantium. They also offered a new one, but to the disappointment of the singer, Aaron, the crowd demanded more old stuff, so they finished things off with “”Her Lucky Pretty Eyes”" (you know, the a lie is a lie is a lie song) off the new album, and although I was surprised they didn’t play “”Count Me Out,”" I never pegged Bane as the type of band to give an encore and sure enough there wasn’t one coming this night. Ah well, the lack of one song definitely wasn’t gonna nullify another great show at the church.