Hieronymus Beboppin’ Bosch

I almost feel 17 and angsty again as Bellingham mathcore dudes Dog Shredder bobble around Bar Pink. All elements are present: drummer in Dillinger Escape Plan tee with Band-Aid under eye as if he just got out of a bar fight. Guitarist flailing around with red SG. Surf-rock grown up and gone weird. Nihilist, borderline intellectual music. World War III music. A Hieronymus beboppin’ Bosch nightmare.

But the crowd remains placid. Heard it before. No longer goaded into freak-out by insane hardcore blast beats and feedback. No moshing, no token cholos doing the agitated crab stomp, no coked-up hipsters thrusting wayward fists. Not long ago, kids peed their pants to Elvis. Now we observe this awesome atrocity with disaffected coffee-shop nods between sips of Tecate. Has hardcore become a spectator game?

Maybe we're all jaded, raised on Gravity, GSL, Three One G. Interested but not enthralled. Glutted on strange noise.

Ghetto Blaster gets the spirits moving with that churning fuck-all SD postcore thing. Frontman Ryan Foxe (ex-Fishwife, the Let Downs) reminds one of Mike Patton or Les Claypool. The hometown supergroup’s members are from Rats Eyes, Irradio, the Grids, and Hostile Combover. The collective head-bobs a little harder.

• Concert: Dog Shredder, Ghetto Blaster
• Date: May 13
• Venue: Bar Pink
• Seats: standing in the head bob section