Unfortunately, for the first time that I can remember a St. Andrew’s show actually started on time, so by the time I got there Liar’s Academy and Fairweather had already played. Too bad, I don’t know anything about Liar’s Academy, but if they’re on EVR they can’t be all bad, and after just having seen Fairweather rock the Maryland Food Co-op a couple of weeks back, I was looking forward to seeing them again. But it was not meant to be I guess.

Upon entering the church the heat hit me like a punch in the face. Hope Conspiracy were ready to take the stage as I entered, and from the first chord they hit while tuning, up a huge pit opened up on the floor. Once they actually played songs it got even more insane. Needless to say, all the remaining Fairweather kids who stayed up front got cleared out of the way pretty quickly. Well I worked my way up front and I came out drenched in other people’s sweat, trying as desperately as I could to scream along with their entire set, which consisted almost entirely of their full length “”Cold Blue.”" Their singer, as always, had a commanding, if not violent stage presence charging into the crowd, grabbing whoever he could and yelling into their faces.

After a short break to allow everyone to cool off, American Nightmare came up. I’m still not sold on these guys. I guess they’re old school hardcore with a lot of metal influence, whatever it is, they never did nothin’ for me so I was watching from the back. However, they had no trouble keeping up the pit action that Hope Conspiracy stirred up, and there were some massive sing-alongs throughout the set. The Stryder came up next and the shift in crowd demographics was easily noticeable. As was the high pitched scream that greeted them rather than the floor-punches the last two bands had been getting. This quintet from New York plays really poppy emo punk, splitting the singing duties 2 ways with the whole band providing back ups. While some of the kids were rocking out to their stuff, I think a few of the hardcore kids got bored. That’s when the “”walls of death”" started. The first one cleared a huge space for them to dance to anything mildly moshable. Then they started launching people as high and as far as they could into the crowd. Fun to watch but I’m glad I wasn’t standing in front of them. Time was at a premium tonight as there were 7 bands to squeeze in, and these guys played another pretty short set. I’m not familiar enough with them to pick out any songs, but it was all pretty good stuff, but they were definitely the odd man out among the headliners.

Bane came up next to a slightly thinned out crowd. And unfortunately, it was another short set. They alternated between old and new and hit all the favorites, from “”Count Me Out”" and “”Superhero”" to “”Can we Start Again”" and “”What Makes Us Strong.”" Hmm, I think they played about 3 other songs too, so I guess I may as well just list the whole set. But then again, I can’t really think now so fuhgeddaboutit. Once again Aaron seemed to suffer from the not singing into the mic syndrome. But I was surrounded by a coupla 100 kids that were singing along at the top of their lungs so I didn’t really lose too much there.

After another break where most of the place emptied out and cooled down in the brewing thunderstorm, Converge came out. One word to describe these guys: chaotic. Every now and then there was a nice little part where you could headbang along or even do a little dance, but for the most part it was all over the place. The singer seemed more concern with causing havok in the crowd whipping around his microphone and jumping into the pit than screaming the words, but hey, it was a good time.

Aside from the abbreviated set times and the inferno in the church, it was plain to see EVR has a good thing with these bands. And seeing bands like Stryder share the stage with a band like Converge is always fun, if nothing else than for the diversity in the crowd.

- review by Raif Hoffman