Welcome to the Private Room - Counterparts Concert Review

Chamber

These guys were the first ones on. My brother and I thought the following band was on first, but we were wrong! We got there pretty early, but they eventually went on and played for 25 minutes. The band was really good. Hard-hitting breakdowns, heavy instrumenals. Everything about them seemed pissed off and angry. This was apparently the last night of the tour, too, and the vocalist had mentioned on Twitter that his throat hurt pretty bad by the end of the tour. Regardless, he did a great job. There were a few people swinging arms during their set. One guy would occassionally come over and start wailing on the guy next to me. No idea why. I guess that's a "mosh pit" at hardcore shows.

END

Next up was END. I didn;t think this band played shows, but I guess they do. They have one EP released in 2017 by the name of 'From the Unforgiving Arms of God.' They also played for 25 minutes. I like this band, and I know their material a little bit. BUT, they played some new songs! All of them sounded pretty good! Mosh pit was just as uneventful as the Chamber's. . . until the breakdown of their last song, 'Necessary Death.' When this breakdwon hit, the whole floor erupted. My brother, my friend, and I were all scared. I remember a guy did a stage dive, and he was punching people as he was crowd surfing. It looked like he was swimming on top of the crowd. The whole pit area was just a massive brawl at this part. We stayed away from that. Glad I got the chance to see these guys.

Varials

This is one of the two bands I'd seen prior to this show. Apparently, my mom's co-worker filled in on guitar for thi band, so that was cool. I also have a windbreaker from this band for their new album 'In Darkness.' They kill it every time. Lots of energy from every band member. They all seem like they're into the music. They're all nice people and that shows in their stage presence. It was definitely cool to hear the new songs live, especially 'South of One' with the vocalist of Counterparts having a guest feature. Mosh pit was the same thing as the last two, except by this point, the room was packed. There was a lot of two-stepping, a form of hardcore dance that I'm actually not sure how to describe. I wish they'd played E.D.A., but they played Empire of Dirt, so I was satisfied with that one.

Stray from the Path

This is a band I don't like too much. Their new album is phenomenal, but everything before save for one album (of I think seven or eight) isn't great. In a live setting, they were surprisingly pretty good. The guitarist and bassist looked like they were 40 year-old Brooklyn natives, because I'm pretty sure they are. The vocaliast looked and sounded like a 35 year-old version pissed-off version of Alvin from Alvin and the Chipmunks. The performance was solid overall, though. I expected a political speech, but I didn't get much of one thankfully. They did play their song 'Goodnight Alt-Right,' which is such a bad song. They played 'Kickback' and 'Fortune Teller' though, two high-energy songs. They filmed a music video during one of the songs, too. I forget which one. I think they're using clips from all different shows from the tour to string together one music video.

Counterparts

This is the band we primarily came for. The tour was named after their 2018 EP 'Private Room.' Ironically, they released a new album during this tour. They played four new songs, I'm pretty sure, and three from the last one, 'You're Not You Anymore.' The performance this band put on was phenomenal. They sounded so together and coherent. They had great energy, even for the last night of the tour. Vocalist Brendan Murphy delivered a flawless vocal performance. During the song 'Swim Beneath My Skin,' I did a stage dive - my only one for the night. When I ran across the stage, I put my hand on Brendan so he didn't back into me and fall. As I jumped off the stage, he said "Banana Man," since I was wearing my button-down banana shirt. Of course, someone jumped on top of me, and we both fell to the floor. I got rug burn, and I still have it as of the time of writing this blog - almost a week and a half after the concert. I would definitely recommend seeing this band. They deserve the support. As they left the stage, Brendan said, 

"The Private Room is now closed. Thank you all for coming."