Ancient Rites, Cloak, Agata
December 9, 2014
The Knockout
San Francisco, CA
The Rite To Remain Violent
Twas the week of Candice’s birthday. Okay, so it turns out that birthdays can be tiresome when you have a shitload of friends who love you. Such is the case with Candice. It’s like the fucking tsunami warning goes off in our neighborhood when we’re anywhere near the week of her birthday. Henceforth, we were tired on Tuesday. Duh, Tuesdays are almost as nil as Wednesdays. Who the hell does anything on that day? You can’t even Hump on Tuesday. Pff, stupid Wednesday, reaping all of Tuesday’s potential Humping fire.
But the Tuesday in question was the Actual Day of Candice’s Birthness so we had to, you know, do something. And guess what? One of our favorite new bands, Ancient Rites was playing on just that day! It was settled. We would pull up our bootstraps, head on over to the Knockout, then wonder why the hell we wore bootstraps. We were pretty tired as I mentioned, but we figured if we were the first to arrive, then we could be the first to leave. A couple of real ragers, eh?
Well, the first part of the equation was a success. We got there before anyone. Our friend Fallis was there though. He sings and plays bass for Ancient Rites so of course he would be there. It was when we noticed that he was the only member of the band who was there yet that we realized how squarely punctual we were being. Hell, we thought, might as well put a few back. Candice got this gnarly Rootbeer float cocktail and was half in the bag from that alone. I don’t know if you hang tough at the Knockout much, but my experience has been that their bartenders are pretty heavy-handed when doling out the booze.
All of the less nerdy/fashionably late folks started to trickle in and before long we were nodding heads and clinking glasses like a couple of hens at a cockfight. Then the first band started: Cloak. Turns out it was their first show. Ever. Now, I should preface this with the fact that I kinda don’t love Deathmetal. At all. To me it pretty much mostly sounds the same, just varying degrees of TickaTickaTickaTickaJunJunJunJun”OAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGG….OOOOOOAAAAAARRRRGG…”JikkaJikkaJikkaJikka…et cetera ad infinitum. So, I wasn’t all that impressed with Cloak. It’s not you, Cloak. It’s me.
After their quick set, it was time for Ancient Rites. This was their second show ever. Candice and I had seen them at their first show when they opened for Hightower, Fallis’s other band who rocked the shit out of San Francisco in days of yore. We loved them then and expected to love them now. Our prediction was correct. We loved the shit out of them. Not literally of course. (Although I might as well say “literally” since no one seems to actually know what that word means. Did you know that Webster’s has recently changed the meaning of the word “literally” because it’s so often misused? What the fuck does that say about American culture? Anyway…) They ruled. Their two guitarists, Adam Benson and Jack Given played in a band called Rock Bottom who we saw a buncha times and they kicked ass as well. But this new conglomeration of skateboard enthusiasts is something that just digests bullshit and spits out Rad.
Did I mention that Candice and I were tired? We were tired. We decided to call it a night. We missed the headliners, Agata cause we were busy getting food from Los Ponchos (to go). Have you ever been there? It’s really good. So we took said really good food home and got fat and silly and slept like lambs. Sacrificial lambs of course. Chuh, we‘d been listening to Deathmetal after all.
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