Local DIY venue The S.P.O.T. recently held a Palestine benefit, hosting not just bands but food, clothing and jewelry vendors and a CFL Queers for Palestine booth for information on how to help locally.
The lineup for the night comprised nine hardcore and punk bands from all around Florida: Right Effort, Andwhentheskywasopened, Noheartleft, AI Death Calculator, Unregistered Weapon, Bonus, Flowers for Emily, Gravess and Watts.
As the night unfolded and the scent of burgers and sweaty Doc Martens wafted into the venue, Right Effort opened the night. The Palestinian bassist of the band had much to say while on the mic.
“Free Palestine, free PR, free Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria, Venezuela, Sudan, Congo, Haiti and Kenya,” Lena Alkhaldi said proudly, holding up her kuffiyeh. “Free everybody from the chains of Western colonization. None of us are free until all of us are free.”
Each band that night would have a few words to say regarding Palestine and colonization, often taking the opportunity to remind the crowd of the roots of punk in its resistance to genocide.
“If anyone had as much hatred as I do for the dumbass, high-class fucking billionaires who don’t even care to share their money with the weak,” said Artie Padgett of Andwhentheskywasopened. “I would imagine we’d put that in our lyrics even if it’s not hardcore.”
Soon enough, AI Death Calculator made room for spin-kicks and stage-diving, as the lights dimmed and harsh vocals spun the room into orbit.
Lead screamer Jeffrey Georges grew up in South Florida feeling like an outsider, even at first in the heavy music scene. As a second-generation immigrant, his family had rigid expectations for him, but Georges said that since exploring local music he’d become more accepting of his sexuality and his life has changed for the better.
“I tell people all the time ‘I wasn’t supposed to find this’ — you know, so it’s very cool that I found it,” Georges said. “I would say going to shows is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Soon after, Unregistered Weapon tore through the venue, with their combined noise detonating a different part of the crowd each time.
Lead bassist Tyler Peterson said that being Black, his family felt that heavy music was not something he was allowed to like or commit himself to, but it was only a matter of time.
“One of my friends was wearing a Converge hoodie with ‘Jane Doe’ on it, and I asked him what it was,” Peterson told Orlando Weekly. “After he told me what it was, I went home and turned it on and that shit changed my whole life. … And then it just went downhill from there, just a whole bunch of mathcore and disgusting bullshit.”
Peterson said that his songwriting is deeply intertwined with the world around us, adding that his middle-school self would’ve found it lame to care about the things that matter, but he found that the hardcore scene has gutted that part of him, leaving him screaming about things that should change while on stage.
“I really am a product of punk and hardcore,” Peterson said. “You can’t be complacent; it’s fucking insane when people choose to say nothing.”
By the time local rampagers Watts hit the stage, the humid air in the venue was almost electric as an exhausted crowd rallied yet again to match the energy of the band’s storming metallic hardcore. The band stirred the assembled moshers almost like a pot of soup.
The air, almost flammable with buzzing electricity, grew stale and the night came to a close — but not until after local genius band Watts strummed their pleading melodies for the worn-out throngs, reawakening the monstrous storm of sound that stirred moshers like a pot of soup.
All told, the gig organizers raised $3,020.68 in donations to be sent directly to Healing Our Homeland, a grassroots women-led organization that has been providing aid and resources to Palestinians since 2016.
