Death Side/Guerra Final/Vaxine/Salvaje Punk @ Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY 8/25/26

Crusty Japanese icons Death Side somehow managed to get in the country and play their first NYC show in a decade or so. Frontman Ishya clearly has been doing this a while. He knows enough English to equate punk with Martin Luther King and rail on the state. The kids are having their say in a way even as the world conspires against them. The Will Never Die! Yet, Death Side were here today and that's all that mattered. That nearly 600 people would pack out the Bowery Ballroom with strictly a crusty underground base says something about the popularity of the genre. I never heard the band before, but my Japanese hardcore loving friend Vanya had bought tickets for the show at the beginning of the summer and alerted me to the excitement while I was trying to get him to join for the Toody Cole show earlier this month. Anything he likes I'll check out.

The now Live Nation venue didn't even bother to put the openers on the website. As if 5 bands weren't even worthy of identification! Death Side was enough to fill it. I got in as Nisemono were wrapping up and joined my old bandmate Vanya upstairs sequestered safely in the balcony safe from diving stage flips and creepy crawlers. Soreness may come from work or as Vanya put it "just standing there" but it was not going to be acquired unnecessarily by audience. Often there is no such luxury of balcony in the front or even existing at these shows. Either it is roped off as VIP or it is too packed with commoners, but tonight the hoi polloi didn't come until we had our spot established, even it someone tried to take it away when I got a round, they quickly gave it up upon my return.

There was a unifying thread since many of the bands came from the Brooklyn label Toxic State. The other unifying thread was international--Black, White, Latin were all in the mix tonight: Japanese headliner, bands opening with Spanish lyrics. The full force of worldwide defiance under a Mohican banner. I finally caught Vaxine who I missed a couple weeks ago on the Mau Maus bill. They do what is now called "UK82" punk which is oddly similar to "D-Beat" punk influence by Discharge from roughly the same era. I guess the difference is a British Oi thread, but the commoner might just think it "hardcore" or just "punk."