In a sea of banging heads, band shirts met Hawaiian button-ups and greasy, stringy hair met careful blonde braids as all demographics came to The Nile on Monday night to see bands Title Fight and Balance and Composure.
With two hardcore acts as headliners, one might have expected only the stringy-haired band shirt wearers to come out for the night.
As the genre as a whole shifts to a more laissez-faire attitude and embraces a larger sense of community, these shows have actually become more diverse in the types of people they bring together. That doesn’t change the fact this was a hardcore show though. And hardcore it was.
Naturally, mosh pits, pile-ons and stage dives were involved.
The pit dissipated as opening act Cruel Hand closed its set. The crowd then merged forward as Balance and Composure took the stage. This was when the stage dives began.
One sole body made his way on stage, circled vocalist Jon Simmons, and faithfully leapt into the crowd. Standing shoulder to shoulder, the audience seemed to be in complete agreement on what was to be done.
From nodding heads, to bouncing bodies, to the more aggressive approach of pushing anyone in close range, each individual enjoyed the music on their own, but still together.
Hands would shoot up simultaneously to catch the next stage diver, and everyone moved as a group.
During Title Fight’s opening song, the crowd moved in a unison that can’t be mimicked anywhere else. It was a swaying motion, similar to the way a school of fish would move, but with more intensity and more pushing.
The band's second song, titled "27," shot the energy level in the room through the roof. Everyone piled to the front for a shot at Ned Russin’s microphone to contribute to the amassed vocal effort.
Throughout the entire show, bodies were flying as people caught crowd surfers and still managed to maintain their rhythm. Even as some people landed in less fortunate spots and hit the ground a bit harder than others, the spirit of the music was not lost.
They just got back up and continued to jam out.
Title Fight's tour is in anticipation of the band's upcoming EP, "Spring Songs," which is due for Nov. 12.
Check out Title Fight at https://myspace.com/titlefight.
Reach the reporter at tnguye39@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @teenyanguyen
