On a humid weeknight in August, I found myself at a hardcore punk show at The Meatlocker, a long-running underground music venue — and literal basement — located in the Manhattan suburb of Montclair, New Jersey. Leading to the main stage downstairs, the walls were covered with inscrutable death metal stickers, spray-painted expletives, and Sharpie doodles of genitalia. The band Knee-Jerk ripped through minute-long songs about social anxiety and how our government is trash, as distorted fractals shot onto them from a digital projector. In between songs, the frontman alternated between chugging a can of Budweiser and a tiny bottle of honey, presumably to ease the pain he was inflicting on his vocal cords from all that bellowing.
After Knee-Jerk’s set, attendees came outside to shmooze, smoke, and respond to texts — typical ways to kill time at a hardcore punk show until the next act is done setting up their gear. Those who were famished, however, had another option: grab a…
