In my last review, I lamented the loss of the Wilson Center as one of the few remaining venues that played punk in the DC area. Tonight, St. Andrews Church may have literally gone out with a bang.

Unfortunately I got caught in Redskins traffic and missed the first two bands. I hope you rat bastards enjoyed paying 60 bucks and another 25 for parking to see your team lose by 20 to a buncha 3rd stringers on a team that couldn’t get five wins last year. In the rain no less. Fuckers.

So I get to this show in time for River City High. In the famous words of Craig Kilborn, as I watched him introduce Jimmy Eat World the other night, “”they’re emo punk. You know, Offspring meets Beck. (I’m not sure what that means.)”" But I do know they sound like many many other bands. I think they also tried to take it upon themselves to bridge the gap between the wussy-ass-emo bands that I missed and the rip-you-a-new-asshole metal bands that were yet to come. So they inserted a buncha cheesy ass 80s metal riffs in their songs. It was kinda cool, kinda lame. Although the crowd for the most part wasn’t blown away by these guys, they maintained a high level of energy throughout their set, bouncing around the stage like little bunnies on speed, which impressed many in the audience. Especially considering it was at least like a million degrees in there.

Next up were the immensely popular Zao. I was never too into them, probably largely due to the fact that I got it in my head they were some god core band and never really bothered paying too much attention to them. So little attention in fact, that I have no idea what they played or who was playing it. I could have sworn last time I saw them play there were five of them. And they looked a lot different. I think they just grab people off the street to play in their band. Only they probably couldn’t kick as much ass that way. The screams of the singer were kinda high pitched and annoying but the music was heavy and got the heads banging. There was a circle pit at some point. I dunno. I was kinda dazed. It was cool and all but I was ready for Darkest Hour.

You know you’re in for a treat when people start clapping along as the drummer warms up. Or at least I thought I was. I had it all planned out. Rock out by the stage during their set trying not to get too badly injured by crowd surfers and stage divers, then after a night of blissful entertainment, go and pick up their new CD so I could relive the excitement over and over. But alas it was not meant to be.

After opening with some song off the new album, they went into the “”Messiah Complex”" off Mark of the Judas. The sound was perfect and everyone was totally into it and all that good stuff when all of a sudden I hear popping sounds. I thought they were caps or something but then when I turn around and look in the mosh pit and there are about 20 lit fire crackers going off in every direction. Not cool.

Amazingly, no one that I heard about was seriously hurt by the firecrackers, but someone needed to go to the hospital because of a chair hitting him in the head or some stupid shit like that. I have no idea what happened. All I know is that everyone left, originally I thought to let the smoke clear. Then we were informed an ambulance had been called and everyone needed to leave so they could get to the kid who was hit out as quickly as possible, and probably to try to keep the cops uninvolved. So who knows what the future holds. I heard people busting on Jamie, the guy who puts on the shows here, for not having enough security or not giving refunds cuz Darkest Hour didn’t really play. Well the bands still gotta get paid and one of the things I liked about St. Andrews is that there isn’t a bouncer near the pit because kids are supposedly smart enough not to bring explosives to concerts with them. If you don’t like the security, volunteer to help. Whenever shows go off without a hitch no one thinks about the people who put it on, or if they do, it’s to cuss em out for making ‘em pay 8 bucks to see 5 bands. We’re all a buncha ingrates.

If by some miracle shows are allowed to continue here I hope we’ll all help out a litltle more or at least show some gratitude to the people who are doing something. Ok, enough rambling. And goddammit in all the excitement I never got my new Darkest Hour CD.

- review by Raif Hoffman