Second Combat @ Ten02, Quezon City, Show Review

The crowd after the show hanging out.

The line-up. Check out the markings at the side.

The day started off bad with some news regarding the previous night's show. And I was pissed to say the least. That kind of lame ass shit should not be happening in this day and age and should not in any way be tolerated.

Any way, we picked up the Second Combat guys at Led's place where we also meet up with Arjelou who will be picking up Motivation at Clark Airport. Now, that guy's dedicated. We arrived at the venue at around 4:30 and there was a nice crowd swelling up. We decided tolo start up the show at around 5:30 with Bystorm kickin out the jams first. We got a knack for opening up shows, I must say. Other bands ALWAYS shy away from the task but someone needs to step up, right? So we bust out 7 songs to start the show and the crowd was getting pretyy thick. STAID (see review of their demo below) belted out four songs of fast energetic hardcore with Ray on vox. Awesome band. Definitely watch out for these guys. KAKTUS KARUKA went up next and did not shy away in delivering their fast thrash from Pagbilao. I heard about these guys but I didn't know they were these good. The first three bands played while the sun was still up so it's a nice thing.

HALF THE BATTLE, a perennial crowd favorite, started off the second half with an interesting twist. They switched instruments before playing with Pao delivering the vocal duties. Smiles were all around and the singalongs were all in the right places for them. After HTB, SAUNA came up and proceeded to deliver their usual selves - outright chaos. Fck yeah. These guys never fail.

SECOND COMBAT went up next and the kids went nuts, shouting out every line. Stagediving, crowd surfing, floorpunching, you got it all. They ended their set with a cover of "Flame Still Burns" - my favorite Youth of Today song. These guys never fail to amaze me.

We went out for a quick bite because we were f'n starving and we missed ISVARAH and only caught the tail-end of PLAY's set. Bummer. MOTIVATION went up next. These guys came straight from Clark Airport to play this show and were awesome. Fast, positive sxe hardcore that never lets up from start to finish. They even did two sweet covers from Uniform Choice and Alone in a Crowd. Hell yeah...

As the show ended early, the crowd still hung out for some time outside the venue. One of the best shows this year and there's plenty more to come. More review coming up soon. Thanks to everyone for coming and hope to see you again on the Antagonist A.D. (New Zealand) and Mouthful of Air (Borneo) weekend this March. Flyers will be up soon...

Good stuff: Second Combat! the Positive Motivation Crew! Staid - demo, Kaktus Karuka - demo, cool new shirts from Kill Ratio, IOD and Omerta, Take-4 Collective in full effect last night...