Capital Punishment #2: Cap Region’s D.I.Y. Ethos, Undefeated

May 03, 2023

"I should have moved somewhere weirder," allows Stoker bassist Scot Robbins. "Thank you for letting me get this off my chest." His sentiment is reflected in his band's psych-infused, fuzz-loving, prog-adjacent metal, a sound playing against most of their local fellows. His bandmate and brother Kieran agrees, noting that he's been in "more placeable groups" and never thrived. Current Cap Region metal skews sludgy and doomy, perhaps inspired by rugged mountains to the north, Empire Plaza's brutal architecture, and the area's punishing regional politics. The longest-ranging and most commercially successful of the doomsters, HUSH, speak to the despairing side of the down-tuned subgenres, while their friends in Wrasp don't consider their punishing sound depressive so much as ecstatic. Says drummer Seth Maset, "When something bleak becomes something triumphant, that's much more satisfying." Bassist Henneghan agrees to disagree: "I want to torture people."

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‘Get the little dudes in there’

Historically, the metal corners of the scene were more aligned with Henneghan and grind-heavy, a tendency that's reared its head again in the DIY realms of recent shows. The Robbins’ sought-after weird can also be found at house gigs and other spots for all-ages shows, which have made a surprise comeback in the pandemic years–in part due to house parties in college neighborhoods. Drug Church's Patrick Kindlon says of Albany basement shows, "They can wax and wane but they don't die." He credits the vacuum left by QE2 and Valentine's with prompting DIY promoters to be "quick on their feet. Food courts; skateparks; brunch restaurants–we were doing shows in motel lobbies at one point." Current collective 2 Dead Hummingbirds has made a habit of cultivating underground gigs at whimsically-named back rooms and basements such as Makeout Reef, Hudson Station, and Troy Speakeasy. The "if you know, you know" flavor of basement shows is easily disseminated in the age of social media, and the younger demographic of the area has responded. For Ben and Shea of 2 Dead Hummingbirds, curating welcoming, accessible shows is their main goal. Says Ben, "Our shows have always been all-ages when possible, and no one turned away for lack of funds, either," a credit to DIY ethos. 2 Dead Hummingbirds specializes in gonzo bills showcasing up-and-coming bands, particularly the extreme fringes of heavy metal, such as Syracuse's Ritual Atrophy and local grinders D.B. Cooper. The Hummingbirds especially love mathcore, and have had impressive success enticing non-locals of all stripes to the Albany area; the headliner of their banner May event, death metal act EOUI, hails from Finland.

Super Dark Collective have been booking experimental, heavy, and mixed bills throughout the Capital Region since 2013, with Saratoga bar Desperate Annie's as the northern book-end of Albany-area live music. SDC have prioritized difficult-to-categorize bands and performance art while balancing free shows with paid-entry crowds, creating a niche in the scene that remains reliable, exciting, and unmatched. A similar booking dynamic has emerged from Crisis Isolation, who balance their calendar between all-ages shows at flexible venues and 21+ gigs at No Fun and The Fuze Box. One of Crisis Isolation's major outposts is Town and Country Skateboards, the dominant culture-maker in tiny Scotia, New York, just across the Mohawk River from Schenectady. Owner Jacob Koehler played in hardcore bands in the day, and now welcomes "all these little dudes" equally to the mini-ramp in his shop's back hall and the stripped-down gigs held in the loading dock.

Schenectady is curiously bereft of small venues, and it's unlikely that Town and Country will expand into venue ownership, due to its village's noise ordinances. But for now, the skate shop fills a void and draws small but rowdy crowds to weekend shows. The TNC gigs are the epitome of DIY, with no stage and certainly no stagecraft, but plenty of vegan chili to go around, Isolationist Jay Krak's calling card. The bills are enticingly hybrid; four suburban teenagers in bucket hats might play before funkcore icons Rebelmatic, an open and honest approach to art that calls back to the aggressively level playing field of the Cap Region golden age. Stoker's Eric Busta confirms that all it takes for kids to get hooked and stay involved is one crucial gig showing them they can do it, too: "I was like, Shit, [Final Terror] did this all themselves and I can do this too!" In addition to area teenagers from the sleepy fringes of Schenectady County, Town and Country draws another key audience: parents. Perhaps most appealingly for listeners of a certain age, TNC shows tend to be matinees–a cool 4PM start time is a great way to get tired working professionals and parents to the gig. In fact, that's the major draw for Henneghan. Of the TNC loading dock he says, "Selfishly, the primary reason I want to play there is I want my kids to come see [Wrasp] play."

Henneghan took his oldest son to see Cannibal Corpse at Empire Live for his first concert (at ten years old, I was jonesing to see Weird Al). Empire Live has been packing metal shows to the gills, injecting much-needed fuel into Albany's questionable status as a can't-miss tour stop. Even its profile as a B-list market has been in jeopardy since well before the pandemic; one of summer ‘23's banner tours, featuring Cattle Decapitation, Dark Funeral, 200 Stab Wounds, and Blackbraid, isn't coming any closer to Blackbraid's Adirondack stomping grounds than New York City. However, recent appearances by Show Me the Body, Terror, Vomit Forth, Sick of It All, and Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean hark back to the glory years of iconic heavy acts like Candiria touring north to play an astounding mixed bill with Dillinger Escape Plan, Isis, and local screamers Endicott. Much of the groundwork to revitalize Albany's spot on the music map is carried out by that blooming network of curators, promoters, and booking gurus, many of whom have a direct presence on the stage as well. Eric Pressman of Crisis Isolation also features in local rock acts Wet Specimens and Mystery Girl. Prize's Seth Eggleston ran DIY shows in his day as well; his spot The Treehouse blew up its Pine Hills basement with soon-to-be-national groups like Prince Daddy and the Hyena, Another Michael, and Jouska. And Cold Kiss guitarist Adam Merendino's investment in Albany's scene is ‘til death.

"You become a recurring character in people's lives," he notes in reference to making a habit of showing up for gigs. An aficionado of hardcore and a hardcore Albany booster, Merendino got serious about booking shows in 2022 with a first-outing smash: the Black Friday show at No Fun. The Thanksgiving weekend show featured a wall-to-wall lineup of local hotshots–Cold Kiss, Prize, halo bite, and Sunbloc–and sold out quickly. Merendino's most recent No Fun bill seduced out-of-towners Colony, Burning Lord, Godskin Peeler, and Seed of Pain to Troy for a night that was well-received by the bands and audience alike. Despite immediate success and fast-growing presence on Instagram under the moniker albanyhardcore, Merendino maintains an even keel. About his fellow musicians and friends he says, "I felt very inspired to try and make Albany more unified and "cool" again." He's also uninterested in being a promoter, seeing himself chiefly and at heart as "a hardcore kid with… shows I want to see, shows other people want to see." That core desire is what fuels his band as well as the space he's carving out for Albany Hardcore shows. A solid slice of old-school hardcore, Cold Kiss delivers on all fronts, with an engaging live show and sledgehammer sound. As a curator of local and out-of-town talent, and a vital voice for both hardcore and metal bills, Merendino is hailed by friends and colleagues in the scene. "Adam tries to bring Albany out of the bubble," says Cure. "They do that at Empire Underground as well, but for bands that are already kind of buzzy. What Adam is doing is a good thing for Albany."

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‘Look how easily this can all be taken away’

In hindsight, the weekend of March 6, 2020 was a big one for the capital. Prize debuted at the Social Justice Center, a shoebox operated by Albany's chapter of Food Not Bombs, with a window-smashing set that felt like the precursor to an amazing spring. Two days later, New York was in high COVID19 lockdown. During the height of the pandemic, venues including The Low Beat folded–but Prize and other newly-formed acts, including Crisis Actor and Sunbloc, were just getting started. For some new bands, fury–at the state of the nation, at Albany's wealth disparity, at local tragedies such as block fires and lead pipes–is prime fuel; Kieran Robbins observes that a lot of young Albanians are angry. That righteous anger's twin is an expansive view of just who hardcore and metal music are for. For J of punky upstarts halo bite, "I think we’re known best for doing whatever the hell we want within the realms of hardcore and punk," citing the Cap Region's blurring of hardcore and metal as core to halo bite's sound and scope. An explicitly personal and political group, halo bite stand out in part due to their contagious, confrontational sound and galvanic live performances and in part to their lineup: Albany stages remain male-centric. Carnwennan guitarist Alex Ashpond notes her presence as "about one of three women at the [North Albany Studio] practice space." However, she also shouts out bookers and promoters for ensuring that a diverse swath of the moshing public feel welcome at their shows. "At this point," she hammers the point home, "I’d say if you don't have girls, people of color, thems, and queers at your show, it's a flop."

The COVID19 pandemic stoked desire for creativity across the country, and Albany responded similarly. Wrasp got serious after months of not seeing one another; Crisis Actor titled their debut EP Isolation; and J recalls the cabin fever reminding halo bite and everyone else "how fun it was and would be to write, perform, and attend together again." It wasn't just musicians in the scene feeling it; Hypersaturation, a slick music and arts zine, also launched from null/void, local t-shirt designers and skate enthusiasts. Albany photographer Kiki Vassilakis has made a name in recent years by photographing musical acts large and small, and can be found stage-side at Empire Live or in the pit at No Fun; her light-streaked and dynamic images capture artists and audiences in communion, and establish a visual vocabulary for Albany's live music. Noteworthy Resources, a skate-centric community organization, debuted with workshops, support groups, and skate clinics–and built an indoor skatepark for Albany within two years (an Escuela Grind set christened it during autumn ‘22). These local initiatives and mutual aid groups like Food Not Bombs are intertwined with the music scene in a tight Venn diagram, all elements sharing overlapping members and a similar community-oriented energy.

Tom Schlatter of Spiritkiller and Saetia finds the positive in the pandemic: "More bands are starting now, possibly due to the feeling of ‘look how easily this can all be taken away.’" In the current era, defined not only by a fraught public health crisis but the rise of machine-taught creative content and ever-shrinking profits for professional artists, hyper-local music scenes carry a philosophical weight. To host gigs in your basement, join a band, or create a zine is to stake out political ground, regardless of whether your art's content is political. If nothing else, Albany was created to be a political city.

At the end of the night, Albany and Troy remain locals-loving towns. Mike Stack, guitarist for trad-metal act The Final Sleep and hardcore band Dying Breed, notes that in the Capital Region's golden age, national acts not only actively sought Albany as a tour destination but solicited local headliners–because that was who the kids wanted to see. "I thought that was normal," Charles Cure agrees. "Around here the local bands were massive. They would draw more people than out-of-town bands." In the 90s, Albany groups were so hometown-successful that parallel scenes were operating, each with their own heroes and must-sees. Cure recalls, "My [Syracuse friends] would say, ‘You’re from Albany, have you seen Monster X? And I was like, Who?" Monster X's youth-crew-adjacent sound simply flew better in Syracuse–and in Japan, and The Netherlands. That's what Cure terms the Albany curse: "If the band gets big outside Albany, then nine times out of ten Albany doesn't care about them when they’re here." Meanwhile, other Albany scenesters list Cure's band Endicott, a national touring act in its day, among that golden-age lineup. Cold Kiss guitarist Joey Ross recalls the proto-metalcore group as his first loud show.

Some of those bands’ members went on to form out-of-town bands. It's a Cap Region truism that Falkirk, whose singer Tristan Stone now heads Author & Punisher, was (in Eric Busta's words) a band that should have been famous. Falkirk's legacy is of a piece with so many other Albany bands who were hallmarks for current musicians; while Falkirk's other members still play in area groups, including Stoker and Scavengers, their musical output is preserved only on Scot Robbins’ Bandcamp. Social media accounts like albany_hardcore_archives and the blog of man-about-scene Ralph Renna are doing their part to document the region's music history. Other golden-age heavy hitters are still alive and touring, including One King Down, who tore up NY with Syracuse legends Earth Crisis in March 2023. But most crucially, local artists have a pragmatic attitude toward balancing their city's forceful history with what its future can be. The most emphatic of the current crop maintain personal visions, as the extreme fringes of metal and the essential heart of hardcore require subjectivity and belief. Prize laughingly claim to be Troycore, but there's as much nu-metal in their sound as anything else–in the local parlance, twiz. Spiritkiller aren't youngbloods, but their vibe is pure heart-on-your-sleeve 90s hardcore. Slowey's goal as a musician is always to be heavier than anyone else–and to engage each musician he records on their own terms. Cure features in three dramatically different outfits, each ideal for a separate goal, dream, or desired creative result. A speculative spirit is alive and well in Albany, as personal artistic stakes have been interrogated and established during the pandemic. More and more, the discerning listener has multiple gigs to choose from, even on weeknights. It's possible that the parallel scenes of Albany's heyday will return, as bands gel and stay together and audiences gravitate toward favorites. The Albany curse might exist, but for artists with a vision, it can also be a blessing. Live music is a challenge to the established norm of, in Cure's words, using social media as a proxy for face-to-face engagement. Ultimately, the locals all agree: a cohesive regional sound will probably never exist again, for metal or hardcore… and that's a good thing.

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Cap Region bands are proud of where their art and effort come from, even if it's not the coolest city in the state. Despite New York City and Boston being short car trips away, an embarrassment of creative riches is staying put in upstate, making their music, and re-centering Albany as a multifaceted DIY hub. Says Eggleston, "Everyone has been making art and facilitating this whole thing for years, and it feels like it's paid off. Who wouldn't wanna be here for that?"

Dee Holloway