How old are the dudes in Converge? It seems like this band has been around for freakin’ ever. I have known their music a little bit for a long time, but I’m not super familiar with them and had never seen them before, so I was up for going with an old-Converge-fan friend. Neither of us knew much about their newer music but it wasn’t like it was gonna be startling.

Anyway Converge was fun. The show was actually pretty early, and Converge was opening for Thursday, so by the time we got there Converge had already started (and we missed the other opening acts). I was never really that big a fan of hardcore, and I haven’t spent that much time at hardcore shows, but I do like it and it was fun to watch these old dudes (the internet says they’ve been around since 1990!) rock out. Converge makes music that is more interesting than just hardcore, or “metalcore.” They are great at putting a few melodic and anthemic elements into noisy heavy songs:

Here are some photos from the Washington City Paper.

After Converge came Thursday, a band I have heard of forever but knew little about. They were kind of mainstream popular about 5 years ago, and were hopping onto Converge’s tour while working on recording a new album. They seemed like nice guys (and they were dealing with some kind of crew medical emergency) but not too many people in the audience cared about them. Their music struck me as “hardcore for girls” which I don’t really mean in a sexist sense. I mean, I know lots of girls that are way more into hardcore than I am. I mean that Thursday is kind of what you would expect, an cleaned-up MTV version of hardcore punk. They were ok at what they did, though.

Thursday is from Jersey and I was watching them and remembering another long-ago Jersey hardcore-ish band, the Trans-Megetti. Whatever happened to them? The singer in Thursday reminded me a bit of the singer in Trans-Megetti and I wondered if they might perchance be the same person? I guess not, but those kinds of wandering thoughts kind of show how into Thursday I was. We left before the end of the show but not before giving them a chance. They weren’t terrible.