On a warm August night in Boston, the streets around Brighton Music Hall buzzed as hardcore and sludge fans packed into the club. While the city wound down, the energy inside was only beginning to build, with a stacked co-headlined performance promising chaos from start to finish.
The first band of the evening was Boston hardcore legends Colin of Arabia. Formed in the early 2000s and fronted by Colin Campbell, alongside Mike, Nick, and Mickey, the band has long been a cornerstone of the scene, carrying raw power violence energy and uncompromising intensity.
As soon as the first notes hit, the room erupted. Tracks like “Everyday I Walk the Same Way Home” and “50 Bag Hate” reminded the crowd why COA has been the final boss of Boston hardcore for over two decades. Their set blended the fury of their early days with the sharpened edge of their most recent EP Trauma Dump, their first release in 2023, after 14 years. The performance was relentless, a testament to their legacy and their refusal to let Boston hardcore die.
The next band to take the stage was New Orleans sludge metal icons Crowbar, formed in 1990 and currently consisting of founder and vocalist/guitarist Kirk Windstein, guitarist Matt Brunson, bassist Pat Bruders, who stepped in for Shane Wesley, currently touring with Acid Bath, and drummer Tommy Buckley. From the crushing opener “Conquering,” the band unleashed a wall of sound that had the crowd locked in.
Their setlist pulled from across their career, with fan favorites like “Planets Collide,” “The Lasting Dose,” and “Like Broken Glass” balancing sheer heaviness with moments of haunting melody. Each riff hit with unrelenting weight, despite Windstein’s back injury, causing him to sit in a chair on stage, his vocals carried the emotional core that has kept Crowbar vital for over three decades and emanated against the walls of Brighton Music Hall.
When Crowbar dug into their sludge-soaked grooves, the energy in Brighton Music Hall shifted into something almost ritualistic. The guitar tone was thick enough to vibrate through the floorboards, every riff landing like a hammer while the rhythm section locked into a suffocating pulse. Fans shouted back lyrics with fists in the air, especially during “Planets Collide,” turning the room into a chorus of voices that matched the band’s weight. Despite the heaviness, there was a strange beauty to it, a collective release where the crushing sound became something almost transcendent, uniting band and audience in one massive surge of energy.
Closing with “All I Had (I Gave),” the band left the stage having delivered a set as punishing as it was cathartic, proving once again why they remain one of the defining forces of sludge metal.
Closing the night was New Orleans sludge institution EYEHATEGOD, featuring Mike IX Williams on vocals, Jimmy Bower on guitar, Gary Mader on bass, and Aaron Hill behind the kit.
The band wasted no time diving headfirst into chaos with “Agitation! Propaganda!,” their jagged riffs and screeching feedback instantly throwing the room into disarray.
Where Crowbar crushed with weight and precision, Eyehategod thrived in disorder, songs like “Sisterfucker (Part I),” “Medicine Noose,” and “New Orleans Is the New Vietnam” unraveled with a dangerous, unpredictable energy that felt both hostile and hypnotic. Mike IX’s snarled delivery, paired with the band’s sludge-soaked groove, turned the set into a violent, slow-burning ritual.
As their set unfolded, the venue seemed to shrink around them, the walls closing in beneath layers of distortion and noise. Eyehategod brought the audience through a haze of feedback and suffocating riffs that felt more like endurance than entertainment. Mike IX’s voice pierced the venue air, jagged and unyielding, while Bower’s guitar churned out riffs that sounded less written than unearthed from some swampy underworld. It was impossible to turn away from, the kind of performance that left the room buzzing long after the final note bled out.
They returned for an encore of “Serving Time in the Middle of Nowhere” and “Dixie Whiskey,” closing the night not with resolution but with a final blast of nihilism.
.Eyehategod
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Brighton Music Hall
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