The Book Slave is a local Wallingford duo consisting of two teens playing guitar, an alesis micron set up as a sampler, and effects. Playing distorted and self described "Indie/shoegaze/punk" which really just sounded like moremy ambient hardcore sans any manner of percussion.
Erza Joyce is easily catagorized as a poppy hardcore band who is currently on tour with some other band that was there that I can't remember the name of, but they weren't that interesting, so I'm going to continue on.
For me there were three bands there that were actually worth seeing, the first being Cold Snap. This is when the crowd started getting violent and I kindof got an idea of what a typical American Legion show is like. Uhhhhh.... so I got whacked in the head and whacked some people in the head and got slammed into walls and pretty much was more concerned with my livelyhood than the quality of the band, but from what I noticed they were alright although the lead singer faced the crowd once and spent the rest of the set yelling towards the drummer.
There was a punk band whose name I cannot remember but they did call themselves "Rancid" a few times (not that funny). Despite the fact that they played pretty generic poppy punk, they had an extremely redeeming feature, that being that their bassist was incredible, apparently a classically trained individual, as shown below
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Post show we climbed into the car and immediately put on Pinkerton and sang along as loud as possible, much needed after that show
But really, if anyone gets the chance I would advise attending a CT hardcore show at the American Legion in Wallingford if one gets the chance.
Oh, and for any saddle creek fans Beep Beep, a band comprised of members of the Faint will be playing there on March 7th for 8 bucks, sweet show