Today we’ve got Felipe Garcia’s and Emily Matview’s reviews of March 30th’s Extreme Thing (with photos from Matview and Hunter Wallace), featuring New Found Glory, Comeback Kid, The Aquabats, Asking Alexandria, Sleeping with Sirens and more.
It’s that time of year again. When the weather starts to heat up a bit and everyone finds any excuse to spend a few hours outside. Some people swim, or skate, or exercise. But for many kids, Saturday, March 30 was all about music, mosh pits, and an unusual amount of people offering free hugs. Extreme Thing, now in its thirteenth year, hosted the usual droves of youngsters looking to scratch their metal, hardcore, or pop-punk itch. All the familiar sights were there; hair every color of the rainbow, way too much skin, abnormally long lines, enough fliers getting passed around to fill each of your pockets, and tons of bands and stages to make everyone happy.
I showed up during the middle of local band We Gave It Hell’s set on the Vitamin Water stage. Admittedly, I don’t know too much about them except that they won Battle of the Fans, and judging by that and the crowd’s reaction, they seem to have a pretty good following. About 15 minutes before it was time for “deathcore” band Atilla to take the stage, an “A-ti-lla! A-ti-lla!” chant started and kids didn’t stop yelling throughout their set. The insane crowd feedback caught me off guard and I came away feeling that they should have played a little later in the day. Unfortunately I couldn’t stick around to see them finish because I had to race across the park to see one of the first hardcore bands I ever got into.
Since the chances of my seeing the Turn It Around anniversary tour are slim at best, this lot of dry grass with around 80 people was going to be my first time (FINALLY!) seeing Comeback Kid. The crowd of eager fans seemed confused as to why there weren’t more people there waiting to see the Canadian hardcore band. Maybe it was the time slot or maybe sixteen-year olds don’t love this band just yet. But soon enough, there was an active pit and pileups during every song. Their set was a good mix of newer jams and unforgettable classics likes “Final Goodbye” and “Partners In Crime.” I’d imagine seeing them play Turn It Around in a place like Anaheim’s Chain Reaction sure beats seeing them at Extreme Thing, but their set was fun and intense nonetheless.
After a wild set by Iwrestledabearonce, Chelsea Grin and Born of Osiris put together two energetic sets for two of the biggest crowds of the day. You’ve never seen so many Walls of Death in your life. Say what you want about scene kids, but they have a ball at these things. Hardcore shows tend to have people who are too cool to move around or sing along, and these kids just wanna jump around, yell really loudly and be away from anyone resembling a parent.
It was around this time of day that you started to notice significant, if not alarming, sunburns on everyone. Throughout the morning and early afternoon a generous amount of clouds had rendered sunglasses useless and had everyone’s spirits up. But the sun made its appearance just as local heroes Alaska were setting up for their thirty minutes on the IADT/XPOZ stage. For the relatively young band that they are, they always impress me with their confidence, and they got a pretty amazing crowd reaction of kids piling up during hits of theirs like “Golden” and “Spaceballs 2.” And the band definitely benefited from the fact that the XPOZ stage sounded ten times better than the Vitamin Water Stage for whatever reason.
– Felipe Garcia
While it’s undeniable that many of the bands on Extreme Thing skew very young (often too young for my own tastes), The Aquabats, who took to the Verizon main stage at 4:45, had the youngest and most adorable audience of the day due to their television success with Yo Gabba Gabba and The Aquabats Supershow. It was cute seeing so many children decked out in matching Aquabats costumes with their parents. Being TV stars hasn’t slowed the ‘bats down at all and they still bring the theatrics with them to their live show (at one point they fought a giant pancake that threatened to end rock and roll). The band opened with the hardcore-tinged “Aquabats Super Show” theme and squeezed in as much from their expansive career as possible, including the nostalgic “Pizza Day” and signature song “Superrad.”
Over at the surprisingly low-to-the-ground Ernie Ball stage, For the Foxes’ brand of fun, infectiously catchy pop/rock was the perfect fit for the already-feels-like summer-in-the-spring day. On the opposite end of the musical spectrum was Boston based post hardcore band Lions Lions. While For the Foxes were laid back and dancey, Lions Lions were abrasive and intense, literally throwing themselves into the performance with a series of non stop jumps and spins. Locals The Runaway Lives filled in last minute for We Are the in Crowd, who unfortunately had to cancel due to a flight delay. They did an admirable job when faced with a sea of disappointed fans who were looking forward to seeing the Hopeless Records pop-rockers. Ernie Ball headliners The Summer Set were up next, another pop rock band who we covered at the House of Blues last year. The lower stage allowed for a more intimate show, which meant plenty of opportunities for vocalist Brian Dale to hold the mic over the small chain link fence that served as barrier for the crowd to sing along.
Back at the Vitamin Water Stage, things were starting to get dangerous in the lead up to post-hardcore band Sleeping With Sirens, who had previously headlined the Hard Rock Café on the Strip stage of Extreme Thing in 2012. The mass of fans eager to see frontman Kellin Quinn and crew had pushed the barrier dangerously close to the speakers and the safety issue forced security to postpone the band’s set. The temporary safety gained from the barrier being backed up was lost as soon as the band started and kids started diving over the barrier and basically going competely nuts. The fans somehow came even more unhinged when headliner Asking Alexandria took the stage, thankfully OK after a bus accident with a drunk driver the night before. While neither Sleeping with Sirens or Asking Alexandria are to my particular tastes, I have to give credit where credit is due. Both of these bands definitely know how to work a crowd, and the fan devotion that they’ve garnered is crazy impressive.
Pop punk veterans New Found Glory closed out the show and, unsurprisingly, put on one of the best sets of the night. Guitarist Chad Gilbert was involved in a microphone-related electrocution just two days before, but he wasn’t showing any signs from it as he leapt across the stage and provided backing vocals for frontman Jordan Pundik. Being that it was a festival and that their set started late due to the late start of Boulder, Colorado-based synthpop duo 3Oh!3 (who had some technical difficulties early on) the band had only a limited amount of time to play through their extended discography and that meant nothing from the criminally overlooked Coming Home, recently-released Radiosurgery or their debut Nothing Gold Can Stay outside of “Hit or Miss,” which saw Pundik against the barrier for a crowd sing along. They paid tribute to their roots while at the same time promoting their upcoming Record Store Day Ramones cover album with a faithfully poppy cover of “Blitzkrieg Bop.” They ended the night with their biggest hit “My Friends Over You” which had the whole crowd dancing and singing along. NFG always puts on a great live show and I can’t thing of a better way to have closed out this very long day.
-Emily Matview
Photos by Emily Matview | https://www.flickr.com/photos/holdfastnow/
and Hunter Wallace | https://www.flickr.com/photos/hunter_wallace/
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