The Sunday show at Dirty Dungarees started with Columbus power trio Brave Face. Their self-described style of “yelling music” consists of a unique blend of emo, screamo, post hardcore, and melodic hardcore, providing ear-pleasing vocal melodies interrupted by the occasional fit of screaming. Despite being played fingerstyle, the bass tone sounds huge, producing a solid bottom end for the tastefully overdriven guitar to sit atop. While alone the guitar may sound a bit thin or “jangly,” in tandem with the bass, along with the simple drum beats, the band achieves a quite impressively mixed live sound.
Perhaps even more impressive are the songs themselves. Brave Face delivers a markedly dynamic performance – their song structures seem to be free flowing, incorporating whatever musical ideas the band found cool. This approach results in the band covering more ground within the duration of a single song than some bands seem to manage during an entire set. Their approach to breakdowns, which nearly elude description, adds to the group’s uniqueness. The drums maintain the pummeling double kick patterns and crashing cymbals that one would expect during a breakdown, and the same goes for the rhythm of the bass and guitars. However, Brave Face trades heavy riffage for more melodic chords, and combined with reverb this creates a style of breakdown I can only think to describe as “dreamy.” If such a style interests you, consider listening to their debut album “Grievance Process,” which was released earlier this year.
The second set, provided by Ohio mathcore outfit and Columbus hardcore staple Dance Like The Dead showed that the band’s riffs were as eclectic and abrasive as ever, with dead delivering tight mathcore jams at breakneck speeds. The band took the floor of the laundromat dressed as emo icons My Chemical Romance for Halloween, and took a break from their typical setlist to perform covers of “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and “Thank You for the Venom.” The remainder of the set consisted of songs off their debut album “DanceLikeTheDead” which was released just two days before this show – that is, except for the final song, which, as has become tradition, a cover of Korn’s “Coming Undone.” I’ve already covered Dance Like The Dead in a previous Damage Report on SALT from 9/20, so if you like more details on the band consider giving that one a read (after you finish this article of course).
Next up was Columbus Hardcore unit GOROH, playing their first show at Dirty Dungarees since returning from a brief hiatus in September. If you like your music to feel like it’s punching you in the face repeatedly, GOROH is the band for you. The band delivers crushing hardcore riffs with instruments tuned so low that individual notes would seem nearly indistinguishable from one another to the untrained ear. Together with the vocals, which range from enraged shouting to beefy gutturals and pig squeals, the end product is an utterly monumental wall of noise and indecipherable eclectic breakdown rhythms. GOROH is just about as heavy as heavy gets, which requires the band to keep their performance exceptionally tight to allow the listener to have a fighting chance at comprehending the onslaught of sound. Despite all their heaviness, they’re also not afraid to pick up the pace every once in a while, and the band even sneaks in some two-steppable drum beats.
On tour from Wheeling, West Virginia comes fallfiftyfeet. Although they describe themselves as metalcore, they most certainly do not keep themselves beholden to any one genre, drawing from almost any style you could think of from punk, hardcore, metal, any “melodic” or
“post” permutations of those genres. Sometimes they even dip their toes into an alt-rock/grungy sound. As a result, the band covers almost anything you could hope for in a song: melodic and atmospheric passages, stank-face inducing breakdowns, clean vocal harmonies, dual screamed vocal attacks, a capella moments, drum and bass driven sections, heavy riffage, tasty riffage, pretty-sounding riffage… There’s a lot of riffage. fallfiftyfeet may not be as heavy as other bands, but they more than make up for it in creativity and raw energetic spirit. Rounding out the night was a very brief set from Ohio hardcore group Stairway To The Sun. The band delivers lumbering, monolithic riffs paired with deep, growly vocals. Some of the riffs are so slow and fat that one could be forgiven for mistaking them for a doom metal group, although the blast beats fast disprove this. For the most part the two guitars stay in the lower register, but they occasionally substitute shrill panic notes and allow the bass to drive the song. Although their set was short, the show was quite long. Perhaps to reward the audience for their patience, the singer capped off the night by hurling candy at the concertgoers – or maybe it was just the Halloween spirit. Who’s to say?
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