Turnstile, Touche Amore, Culture Abuse, Razorbumps & Nosebleed @ Warsaw (pics, review)
Baltimore hardcore band Turnstile released their genre-defying sophomore album TIME & SPACE back in February and they brought their tour with Touche Amore, Culture Abuse and Razorbumps to Brooklyn’s Warsaw on Saturday (5/5) for their first NYC show since the album’s release. Turnstile have always had a reputation as an insane live band, and they had no trouble living up to that expectation on Saturday. The show opened with TIME & SPACE‘s R&B-ish interlude “Bomb” playing over the PA, and then Turnstile proceeded to play crusher after crusher, playing almost all of the highlights from the new album and plenty of older faves.
Before TIME & SPACE, Turnstile’s approach was most focused on pure aggression, but with the clean vocals, harmonies, and atmosphere that flesh out the new album, they made sure to re-create all that stuff at the show, without sacrificing the thing that longtime fans love about them. Manical shouter Brendan Yates gave bassist Franz Lyons the lead vocal mic a couple times (for the second half of “Generator” and all of “Moon”), and both guitarists contributed some well-executed harmonies too. It added a lot, and by breaking up the more full-on aggressive parts with other sounds, it made those aggressive parts hit even harder. And whether Turnstile were doing a catchy singalong like “Moon” or a more in-your-face song like “Big Smile,” the crowd was going wild for every second of it. Most people in the room were jumping up and down or pointing and shouting, and as you should expect at a Turnstile show, the pit was no joke. There was a barricade so there was less stage diving than there surely would’ve been otherwise, but one very memorable moment came when an audience member crowdsurfed with a walker, and the band brought him on stage to headbang along with the band.
There were just about as many people there for Turnstile as for Touche Amore, who played second to last and who were as excellent as ever. Touche recently dropped a new song “Green” and they played that, but with no new album to support, they mostly mixed it up with favorites from all over their career. They did stuff like “Flowers and You” and “Rapture” from their latest Stage Four, “Just Exist” from Is Survived By, “Pathfinder” and “The Great Repitition” from Parting The Sea Between Brightness And Me, and as they’ve done many times over the years, they closed with “Honest Sleep” from their 2009 debut …To The Beat Of A Dead Horse. That song is still a showstopper nearly a decade later, and it ended with the band stepping away from the mics and letting at least half the crowd shout every word.
It was clear that a good amount of Culture Abuse fans were in the house too — a couple older songs started some very loud singalongs — and they treated to those fans to a very fun (and funny) set. Compared to the dead-serious Touche Amore, Culture Abuse are kinda goofy, which suits their surfy punk well. They opened with “Calm E,” the lead single off their anticipated Epitaph debut, and then flew through a set of rippers that had the band rocking out and had frontman David Kelling showing off the echo on his mic with a series of wordless shouts.
Before Culture Abuse was Texas punks Razorbumps, who released an album on Pop Wig (the label run by Turnstile and Trapped Under Ice members) last year. They were super fun and had a jittery energy that added a lot to the musically diverse bill. Before them was hardcore band Nosebleed, who I missed, but who our photographer didn’t. Pictures of all five bands are in the gallery above.
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photos by Amanda Hatfield
